Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I do not share and do not like to get involved in too much of the Opposition versus the Government popular hysteria about crime and I have not done so in my political career. It is one of the easy issues about which to generate hysteria. As Senator Mansergh correctly said, very often the people who talk about the hysteria, prominent journalists and politicians, are not at the receiving end but they generate a climate of increased fear in communities where there is already a receiving end. It makes the lot of older people living in poorly-policed and poorly-serviced communities worse off when a perception is put abroad that even to go to the local shop for a bottle of milk at dusk is more than an elderly person will risk. I include myself in what I am about to say. I am sure there are moments when I have broken this rule. We all have an obligation not to create a climate of hysteria in our community about crime and law and order. We all give in to that temptation but we should not do so and neither should spokesmen or representatives of the Garda. We have an obligation to give our citizens a level of security.

In giving people a level of security we have to deal with the reality on the ground. We have to think that in terms of crime, perception is nearly as significant as reality. A number of speakers have said that if one walks around the streets of New York — it is approximately a year since I was there — the perception that there are police everywhere not only feeds a visitor with a sense of security but, quite clearly, feeds back to the citizens of that city who are more visible on the streets at night. If more citizens are prepared to be on the streets because they feel they will be more secure, the consequence of that will inevitably be less crime. There will not be as much crime on crowded lively city streets as in areas where there are only one or two visibly nervous citizens present.

One of the things that most of the reviews of Garda deployment carried out by management consultants have failed to take into account is the reassuring value to people of the visibility of the Garda. I am sure they can produce statistics which show that Garda or police on the beat do not correlate to dramatic reductions in the level of crime because I suspect they do not. However, they correlate to a sense of public reassurance about the way crime is being dealt with. That is more important than the objective figures because it is fear of crime as much as the reality which spoils people's lives. Fortunately, for much of their lives most people never encounter a serious criminal offence to their person. They may experience petty burglaries or perhaps have a radio stolen from their car. The only time I was assaulted it was my own fault, which I will not go into, although I was not breaking the law. I was working with the Simon Community and was beaten up but I had chosen to be where I was and do not blame anyone else. Beyond that incident, I have been burgled and had my car broken into, which are nuisances only.

A week after I came back from New York, I ended up walking from one end of O'Connell Street to the other at 12 midnight. My 16 year old son was with me and I was genuinely concerned because I saw only one member of the Garda Síochána on the entire length of our main street on a busy Wednesday night. I am not sure whether that is a result of numbers, deployment, organisation or management, but I am more than happy to welcome extra gardaí because their quality has improved beyond recognition.

They seem to be older and better educated, the best evidence of which is the capacity of the Garda college, with its small number of students, to compete in third level sporting competitions. My friends in CIT tell me that they may only have a small number to pick from but their average age is higher than the average age of third level students generally. Moreover, what they lack in numbers, they make up for in physical maturity and I presume they are fit, strong and healthy. Therefore, we are obviously recruiting very good gardaí.

As one who often criticises the Garda, I acknowledge that individual gardaí have traditional qualities for which they often do not get enough praise. During all my time with the Simon Community, the vast majority of gardaí showed a capacity for good humour, flexibility, compassion and patience that a large number of people in the caring professions do not. I saw gardaí duck crutches thrown by a particularly well-known character in Cork who is now dead. They did so with considerable good humour because they knew him, his history and his drink problem and were aware that he was homeless. They brought him home on many nights and carefully took evasive action so they did not get flattened by a crutch on the way home.

We need to retain that spirit of public service and managerialism of itself will not do this. Extra numbers committed to the values of the Garda as a community force is what we need. Extra numbers to turn it into a managerial force, based on modern managerial deployment techniques will not restore the sense of community confidence that the sort of gardaí, with whom we are familiar, should give us in society.