Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas don Ghrúpa Réigiúnach as an rún seo. There has to be a real concern about the morale in the Garda and their stated positions recently. I do not want to get parochial around this. I have spoken about the fact that we have such low Garda numbers in north Kildare before. I believe that we are at a critical stage. I welcome the fact that the Minister is here.

I come from a Garda family including my father, grandfather, several uncles and cousins. While my father retired from the force as a superintendent, he very much felt himself an ordinary member of An Garda Síochána. He was like a community garda before there was a title for it. I know about the loyalty of every member of the Garda to the job. I know their pride in the force and I know how difficult it must have been for the ordinary rank-and-file members individually and collectively to have taken this unprecedented move by a vote of a confidence in the Garda Commissioner. It should never have come to this, a Aire, but we reap what we sow. That line has now been crossed.

I say to the Minister for Justice that she really has to get her policing house in order quick smart. She needs to listen to what the members of the rank and file are saying. She needs to make sure that these men and women know that she is not just hearing them but is actually listening to them and valuing them in more than press releases or words. Nothing less will do. It is notable that the party that prides itself on being the party of law and order has overseen a decline in morale on such a deep and wide and scale, that it would come to the stage where the line has been crossed. The very people we depend on for the security of our State are left feeling unvalued and unprotected themselves. I have said to the Minister before that as a child I was never worried about my father going to work, apart from the day of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and it was all hours when he came home. I saw a garda who had just recently retired saying he had to explain away to his kids bruises he had received while he was on the job. We have all seen the videos online of gardaí receiving vile abuse. Gardaí and their families should not have to bear the brunt of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ripping up the social contract to the extent that vulnerable people have been easily led up the garden path by a nasty vile cohort - people who have been pushed to the margins by this Government feeling they have nothing left to lose and behaving so badly. The situation is appalling, unacceptable and dangerous.

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