James Bannon (Fine Gael)

I, too, join with others in condemning the thuggery that took place on O'Connell Street last weekend. There is a lesson to be learned, namely, that the Garda needs adequate resources to deal with incidents such as this. The force is inadequately resourced at the moment. That is evident from talking to gardaí not alone in the capital but also in rural parts of Ireland. Right across the country elderly people are living alone or in isolated areas and they cannot sleep at night because they are afraid of intruders. This is something about which complaints are made to us, as politicians, on a regular basis. Criminals are running amok in our country. A major problem in the midlands, and indeed in the rest of Ireland, too, is that there is a Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who has no regard for rural communities. As the Leader knows, the Minister has been invited to the midlands several times to address this whole issue. In the Longford-Westmeath division alone there has been a 5% reduction in gardaí since this Administration took office more than nine years ago. Despite the increases in the local population and in the crime rates——