Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tá mé buíoch go bhfuil deis againn an plé seo a bheith againn inniu sa Dáil. We have been talking about gardaí. I was talking to some over the last couple of days and I begin by remembering the victims of the tragic accident last Friday in my constituency and my part of the county, namely, west Donegal. There was a terrible road accident and my thoughts and prayers are with the families of Jamie Diver and Shaun Martin McClafferty as well as the two young men who are fighting in hospital at the moment, and all their loved ones and friends. It is a devastating sadness that was visited on our community across Donegal. Unfortunately, it is an experience we have witnessed too many times, but I take the opportunity to commend the gardaí. I was on the road that night and saw three Garda cars rushing to the scene of the accident. They are turning up for their duty but, given the scenes that sometimes unfold in front of them, their professionalism, along with that of the other emergency responders there, has to be commended and I do that. They work in some of the most difficult situations imaginable and deserve our gratitude and respect and they deserve our support and the resources as well.

The Minister will know that in Donegal there is significant anxiety among rank-and-file gardaí and in our local communities about what the new Garda policing model means for the county. Donegal is one of the last counties where the new model is yet to be rolled out and there are concerns it will harm the links to local communities. Gardaí on the ground clearly have no confidence in the planned changes and they continue to struggle with a shortage of personnel and equipment. I invite the Minister up to Donegal to experience that and ask him to make it a point of priority to reach out to the gardaí and go on a visit. He should look at the vastness of the county, the Gaeltacht community, the offshore islands, the Border that has to be policed, the airport that carries international flights and the coastal community that has to be policed along with Killybegs and try to figure out how two Garda districts or two Garda community policing areas will suffice. They simply will not.

We have seen the chipping away of Garda resources in Donegal for many years. The brutal fact of it is there are significantly fewer gardaí in Donegal than when Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael went into government in 2020. There are 18 fewer gardaí in the county. What does that mean? Many of the Garda stations across Donegal have two or three gardaí in them, so when we have Garda stations without gardaí it is because of the dwindling of resources. We have one third fewer gardaí policing our roads than we had three years ago. The new plan does not taken into account the challenges that exist due to the size of the area, the geography and all that. I ask the Minister to recognise this.

The last point is it is an insult to rank-and-file gardaí on that ground that since February of last year there has been no superintendent in Letterkenny. Letterkenny covers a huge division, a huge area, but has no superintendent. We cannot have it that all resources are going to Dublin. We are aware there is a challenge in Dublin but there are challenges elsewhere. It is disrespectful to the rank-and-file gardaí who turn out every day to do their job to leave them without a superintendent for so long and I am asking the Minister to make a direct intervention in this. I invite him to the county to look at the challenges we have, especially concerning this new model and the Gaeltacht communities it will serve.

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