Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I know the Minister is only joining us now but my colleague, Deputy Ahern, has laid this out very distinctly. Realistically, it is vital we have laws and proper functioning courts in place to deal with crime in this country and that is what Deputy Ahern has said. Also important is the fact that non-jury trials should be the exception rather than the rule. I will concentrate the rest of my contribution on Garda numbers. My colleagues across the benches have spoken about the issues with Dublin and I totally respect that but they also mentioned the fact that a lot of that crime is spreading into the commuting communities and rural communities of my own county of Kildare and the counties surrounding the capital. The population of County Kildare at the moment is almost 250,000 people yet our Garda numbers are among the lowest per head of population in the State. Again, the recent allocation of new gardaí from Templemore did not bring much change to this statistic. Kildare and Newbridge Garda stations received only one new garda while my own town of Athy received none. The whole county of Kildare, with a population of 250,000, received just six new gardaí. Kildare, as the Minister well knows, is a rapidly growing county. I believe the Minister was down there today. Not only does it cater for a rapidly growing population but we have a huge amount of commuting traffic and a lot of road and rail networks going through the county daily. We have thousands of people on the move and, thankfully, thousands of people coming to work in the county each day. This is bringing serious challenges to the Garda force within the county and the workload the gardaí have to carry out is increasing expediently every day. When we look at the additional population numbers this country will have to take in the coming years, a lot of the concentration will be in the commuting counties of Kildare, Wicklow, Meath and Louth, yet the Garda figures for these counties are among the lowest per head of population in the State. We must look at the whole social infrastructure. It is great having the roads and the rail network but the social infrastructure must be there and a part of that is having the Garda numbers to protect those who are living in that particular location.

If we take, for example, the town of Newbridge in my own area with a population of 25,000, Newbridge has, according to Garda statistics, 57 gardaí stationed in the town. If you work that out, that is a ratio of 440 people for every one garda. That is not acceptable in any form. My own home town of Athy, where the Minister was today, has a population of over 11,000 people and has just 34 gardaí serving in the town. I know the Minister will come back to me if he gets the chance and will tell me this is a matter for the Garda Commissioner, as have I have been told on numerous occasions in this House and the Seanad before. However, somebody needs to start matching up Garda numbers and population figures. Somebody needs to make that decision very quickly because we cannot continue with what is going on at the moment with Garda numbers not reflecting the population and my own county with 250,000 people not having the Garda numbers. As my colleague, Deputy Lawlor, said, antisocial behaviour is increasing in these towns. We need to see gardaí back on the beat as has been said throughout the debate today. I would really appreciate if consideration could be given to that.

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