Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

——that he has achieved his objectives. It is an absolute scandal. No other medium to large-sized town in the country would have a situation like that in my constituency. It perpetuates this awful attitude of the community and police to each other because there are no recruits in the constituency.

The Minister must be an interventionist. To take the argument of the Senator opposite about acceptance, the police will be accepted only when one, two or three of them lives in our midst. The argument put up on countless occasions in some parts of my constituency is that the police do not live among the people, do not care about the people and run through the estates in their cars, that they are not engaging and are not part of the community.

I fully agree with the Minister's comments that they must be rooted in the community and I have tabled an amendment on the issue of housing. We must be much more novel in the way in which we provide housing options for young members of the force who cannot afford to buy a house — I refer to the typical couple, a teacher and a garda. We must be much more novel about how we encourage people to live in all parts of society.

I leave the Minister with one case, that of a woman in my constituency whose son joined the force. She had to leave her house because of the bullying and intimidation she faced because he had joined the police. Lunatics and thugs attacked her house on a constant basis. It was so unreal for a member of that community to attempt to join the force that she was hassled and bullied on a continuous basis, so much so that she had to leave the community. My community would not accept that. There must be the same kind of revulsion within her community and the only way that can be achieved is through a general policy of recruitment.

I ask the Minister to look at this issue. Perhaps it could be dealt with in section 20 which deals with the strategy statement to which he referred. If the Minister could be more explicit, if he is giving the House a commitment that when he sets objectives for the Commissioner when this Bill is enacted he will tell him that this is an issue about which the House feels strongly and about which the Houses would ask him to be imaginative, that he would establish new recruitment policies in schools in those areas in particular to ensure we improve the number of recruits from these areas, if he gives me the assurance that he will make that a key priority for the Commissioner or he can do something in terms of tweaking section 20, then I will withdraw my amendment which was a rather crude attempt. The point is crucial. The only way to achieve acceptance is to improve the recruitment rates in these communities.