Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)

I was really disappointed with the Minister of State's response. There was nothing new that we did not know about before we came in here tonight. It pains me when I talk about these issues in the city of Limerick that I love but it pains me more to see ordinary working families being abandoned by the State. In 2008, Limerick had 92 community gardaí; we now have 30. In 2008, John Fitzgerald commissioned a report which dealt with the policing regeneration programme. He said we needed 100 extra gardaí and a new superintendent. We got 100 gardaí and 99 retired so we got one. We got one garda - that is what we got. About a week ago there was a petrol bomb attack in an area of the city. It took two hours for a Garda response to come to that, even though it was on social media for an hour before the gardaí came out to it. We never got the gardaí we were promised and communities have been left abandoned. As I have said, crack cocaine did not just appear in Limerick; organised gangs brought it to Limerick. I have raised this in the Dáil for the last three or four years. They targeting the most vulnerable people in the State. I agree with the Minister of State that we need a co-ordinated response to this and that is what Operation Copóg was. We need a version of that again. We need to put the resources in. When the Minister sees the new recruits coming out of Templemore, Limerick has to be to looked at. We cannot go by the size of the population. We have to look at the problems we have in north inner city Dublin and parts of Cork city but Limerick city in particular needs to make sure we get a fair share of those gardaí. It cannot just be based on population because that is simply not going to work. Communities are abandoned and it is not good enough.

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