Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There was a recent meeting of councillors from the Nenagh municipal district with the new Garda superintendent. The cross-party group of councillors came out of the meeting pretty shocked because he more or less admitted that he did not have the resources in the Tipperary-Clare division to meet the requirements of the area. He was pretty matter-of-fact about it. He has to be admired for how blunt he was with the councillors. A member of the Labour Party, councillor Fiona Bonfield, was completely shocked. We have known about the issues regarding Garda presence across north Tipperary for some time. It comes up in our office every week. The bluntness with which the new superintendent admitted to not having the resources was fairly frank. There are huge recruitment and retention issues across the country for An Garda Síochána. I know of two local people who wanted to join the force and went to their local sergeant for advice. By the time they left, they were no longer interested in joining. I know of a situation in the south east where a number of gardaí just left their jobs and went to Australia. Recently, a member of the force left to join Irish Rail, for better pay and conditions, as I understand it. This issue is ongoing. If the Government does not face up to this we are in serious trouble. The issue is not just in Tipperary and Clare. Pay and conditions and the work culture are massive issues in the force.

As a division, why Tipperary-Clare was set up is bizarre because it is a logistical nightmare. Many of the gardaí are burnt out. Let us look at a scenario in Roscrea, where there were not enough gardaí. A garda went from Newport on secondment for six months to cover Roscrea. Newport to Roscrea is not a short distance but he had to go for six months. That leaves Newport short a garda. There is no marked police car in Newport. Roscrea has a 2012 Ford Focus, a community policing car. Killaloe Garda station, which is part of the same Nenagh-Killaloe area, has no marked car. We have the Garda Training College in Templemore. There is currently a position there in the actual Garda room in the college. Hundreds of gardaí have applied for the position, to get away from front-line policing. They do not want to continue given what they have to put up with. Members in the division on long-term sick leave are not being replaced because there is no one to replace them. Gardaí are being put into areas where they have no local knowledge, so there is a deficit in actual response times. Bureaucracy on small issues is taking up a lot of time. We are taking gardaí from smaller towns and bringing them to bigger towns. Community policing units and crime task-force units are great in theory but when gardaí are being taken for these from front-line policing in stations and the stations are being left vacant, what is the point? We are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We have very few foot patrols due to the lack of police on the ground. This is a serious issue in Nenagh, Thurles, Roscrea, Newport, Templemore and everywhere else. We have a situation where, on some days of the week, there are six gardaí, two in Newport-Killaloe, two in Nenagh on outside duty and one or two in the Roscrea area. That is not sufficient. When are we all going to wake up? This is just referring to the division in my own area. Unless pay and conditions are improved and the job becomes a vocation that people want to get into we are not going to have the police force we require.

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