Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The first issue I want to mention before I go into other issues is the recruitment ban that is currently in place in University Hospital Kerry for clerical and administrative staff. There are currently 50 whole-time equivalent, WTE, vacancies in that hospital in an area that has been traditionally under-resourced for years and where the administrative staff are underpinning every service within the hospital. The duties of these clerical staff include plans of care, communicating with GPs, retrieving medical health records, making appointments and supporting consultants. Imagine if there was a shortage of 50 staff or there was an announcement of 50 jobs coming to the town. There would be no shortage of Ministers willing to take credit for it. The embargo that is in place is going to cause severe problems. I know of people who are acting up at higher grades who are not being compensated or paid for doing so.

The efforts that are being made to reduce the endocrinology waiting lists and deal with cardiology are going to be affected by the lack of staff and by this embargo. I am asking the Minister to tell her colleagues to do something about it. We cannot wait until the new RHAs are appointed in 2024 before something is done about it.

On the justice side of the budget, we are playing catch-up. The Government's measures are unlikely to forestall a crisis in many areas of the justice system. Recently I received a communication from a member of An Garda Síochána in Dublin. He told me there was nobody available to take the Áras overtime in one particular station, or the Cabra overtime, so regular gardaí from Blanchardstown and Finglas had to be sent in there. Blanchardstown was then down to a minimum of one car, in an area with a population the size of Limerick. Cabra had no car, apparently, and one person left in the station. Finglas was also down to the minimum. That is the level of crisis that was going to be there when the industrial action was taken. Thankfully, there has been some progress in relation to that but we are at crisis point if these negotiations do not work out. Sinn Féin has proposed a doubling of the training allowance to try to increase the number of attestations. Every lever must be pulled in this area due to the historic issues with recruitment and retention over the last number of years. There is no harm in reiterating what numbers have been. In 2021, there were 14,200 gardaí. In 2022, there were 14,211 and in 2023 it was down to 13,900. Combined with these stagnant numbers, we now see an increase in resignations from the baseline. There were 312 departures in 2018 but 405 in 2021, 476 in 2022 and 227 up to the end of May of this year. There is of course a crisis in morale in An Garda Síochána. Only 24 had attested this year up to a few months ago, while 116 started their training in 2022. Obviously if you do the maths, there is a huge gap if we are to return to the more than 600 attestations per year.

We discussed this earlier and I know the Minister is aware of the issues relating to garda presence, the Garda Reserve and full implementation of the report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland. As I said, the roster dispute is looking more promising than it did a number of weeks ago but this agreement will not forestall further departures. The budget is unlikely to do the same either. I would be interested to see how much of the budget allocated in this area is a carryover from the last three years. There is obviously an increase in overtime with the roster that is currently in place but in many Garda divisions across the country, finding enough gardaí to actually do the overtime is the challenge. I have given one example. I have heard other stories of close to 100 days in annual leave accumulated. One can only stretch people so far before they break. New recruits are important but we are losing well-trained and experienced officers. Few gardaí are staying a day beyond their finishing date and many that I know are buying back their time to get out as early as possible.

Outside the justice portfolio and recruitment and retention, we have also received many emails from rank-and-file gardaí. They also mentioned the lack of affordable housing and having to face the prospect of emigration. Gardaí feel they are lacking support and are overburdened with paperwork and inputting. The Taoiseach seemed to be in the mood to shoot the messenger when emigration was raised with him but it is a fact that many public service professionals are leaving the country; not only gardaí but teachers and nurses are priced out of owning homes. While this is not the Minister for Justice's direct responsibility, the policies of the Government over the last 12 years are not working.

The extra provision within prisons mostly deals with increased prisoner numbers and some ICT upgrades. I would hope the Government could be more progressive in dealing with trying to reduce incarceration rates. We will shortly be introducing a Bill that will try to deal with this and have restorative justice. We will support the Government if it wants to take some of our ideas on board. With regard to the youth justice programme, while an increase of 10% is welcome, we had proposed 20% in order to deal with the crisis with young people.

Going back to the Garda issue, 136 Garda stations were closed from 2012 on and the saving has been a mere €3.2 million. Imagine if we had those Garda stations now - we might not be dealing with the problems we are dealing with. At the time, the public were promised that this would allow for rank-and-file gardaí to be redeployed to front-line duties and, of course, that never happened.

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