Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. I will make a couple of points and I hope the Minister of State will take as much of this as possible back to the Minister. I welcome the fact that the Minister was in Cork recently. I understand he also met the chamber of commerce and that is a good thing. It is important that the Commissioner meets with public representatives in Cork. The business organisations in Cork make the point that we are all very keen for the city centre to be a place in which people can live, socialise and work. One of the issues for business organisations and for the people of Cork as a whole is the Garda presence in the city centre. It is coming up at that level. I hope that the Minister of State listened to that very carefully.

There is a wider issue with recruitment to An Garda Síochána as a whole. I am concerned that the number of gardaí this year will potentially decrease because of retirements and that needs to be addressed.

Not policing on a station basis and ensuring policing is delivered by all resources came up at a community safety meeting recently. The amount of resource keeps getting thinner and thinner, as was the case when there were units in Carrigaline and Douglas. If the car in Carrigaline was busy responding to an incident, for example, in Crosshaven, the car from Douglas would come up. If there is now only one car between them, and if that car is responding to an incident, then a car has to attend from somewhere else. There is no miracle of the loaves and fishes here. Just because policing is fluid and moves from station to station, if there are fewer units, and that is fundamentally what we are talking about, and four units are reduced to two with one unit covering an area with 50,000 or 60,000 people, which is effectively the size of a small county, at night, that is not good enough. I would be concerned that there are going to be situations where gardaí will not be able to respond to two serious incidents that happen within their unit area, which is effectively two station areas, at the same time. That is the concern that people have. The Garda Commissioner needs to take this seriously and I urge the Minister for Justice to take it up with him.

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