Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Councillor Shane Curley from Loughrea, a fine public representative from the west, who is in the Public Gallery.

This is positive legislation. It is something I spoke about 18 months ago in the House. Not a week goes by that we do not see on social media gardaí being harangued, pushed, jeered at and, in some instances, punched and cars being driven at them by absolute thugs, scum. It is right that gardaí should be given every personal defence possible when uniformed, on the beat or driving their cars. A body cam is certainly the way to go about starting that and empowering them once again. Morale is low in the force at this time. I have seen body cams. Before I spoke on this matter in the Dáil some months back, I acquainted myself with what they look like. There is a light and a recording button. The individual standing in front of the garda at the moment of the interaction is not recorded unless there is a very good need for it or unless a situation has escalated. A light comes on. The individual is very much aware that the incident is being recorded. It is a no-brainer. It is about empowering our gardaí to once again become strong enforcers of the laws of our land, not to be pushed about by thugs on our street. We have seen far too much of that. I hope that during the Minister's tenure in the Department of Justice, as the helmsman of the Department, he will be the strongest defender of our front-line gardaí.

As I said, morale in the Garda is low at this time. More than 100 gardaí are suspended. The Minister cannot interfere operationally in that. An investigation is under way with the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Some of the gardaí are suspended because they squared road traffic fines and others for worse alleged offences. The Minister cannot interfere with that. Some of those suspensions are now 18 months on. These are really good, qualified gardaí who are at home and being fully paid. They would be far better off back on our streets and on the beat. The Minister has to have some oversight of this to speak with the Commissioner. He cannot be judge or jury and find them guilty or innocent - that is for somebody else entirely - but surely this needs to move on. The Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation needs to move this on. The gardaí are either guilty or they are not. If they are not guilty, let them get back to what they are good at doing.

Mobility in the force is quite limited as well. I have many friends in the Garda. When gardaí graduate from Templemore College, most of them inevitably end up in inner-city Dublin stations. There is a certain buzz about that because of the activity and the footfall on the streets of Dublin. As time moves on, however, gardaí get engaged, perhaps get married, start families and are drawn to come back to their home communities, but there is little mobility. There needs to be a perfect match. If a garda wants to come back to County Clare from Dublin, he or she needs somebody to go up to Dublin for him or her to come down to Clare. It does not always work perfectly. That in itself is a morale-draining issue of which the Minister should have some oversight.

I wish to speak in my last minute about databases. We have had a DNA database in Ireland since 2015. It is now nine years old. We have the Eurodac database for fingerprints across Europe. Those data, I fear, are not properly stored or held. Eurodac erases its data every two years. Some countries have tried this in the past. It would be wonderful in this day and age if Ireland were to move to mandatory fingerprinting for all people. The majority of people have nothing to fear, and we have biometric passports now in a lot of EU countries, but when a crime is committed, there could be a data set there readily available to one's local Garda station and at the scene of a crime. At the moment it is hit and miss. It is a matter of dusting down the fingerprints and trying to collate those data.

Surely using all the scientific advances there have been in the world in recent decades we should move to some form of fingerprint database for all citizens so that gardaí are not left spending months trying to investigate something that could probably be solved quite quickly.

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