Phil Prendergast (Labour)

I welcome the Minister to the House and am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I, too, wish Garda Sherlock well in his recovery. For a servant of the State to be shot down while carrying out his brief was a most horrendous event. Drugs and crime are irrevocably linked. Increasingly, it is juveniles who are involved in these crimes and we do not have suitable places of detention for them. Neither adult prisons nor psychiatric units are suitable.

How are decisions made regarding the numbers of gardaí assigned to a particular area? Tralee, for instance, although the same size as Clonmel, has twice as many gardaí. Much credit is due to the Garda and the work its members undertake throughout the State. I particularly appreciate the achievement of gardaí in Clonmel in respect of their juvenile liaison activities. Alcohol-free events, which provide a positive outlet for hundreds of young people, have been organised in the town. The student gardaí who attend these events foster a relationship with young people in the community.

More community gardaí must be assigned to communities. In addition, closed circuit television should be installed in all urban centres and we should make more effective use of it. The gardaí in Clonmel work hard but are operating out of a medieval building that is not suitable to the needs of a modern police force. They have neither the privacy nor the facilities to assist them in carrying out their functions, but they do so with great efficiency. It was one of the aims of the county development plan to identify a new site for a Garda station, but there has been no progress in this regard.

Some 3,500 mobile telephones have been seized in prisons. Given the existence of technology for identifying when mobile telephones are in use, it should not be difficult to identify whether a specific location, such as a prison centre, shows an abnormally high usage. However, I welcome the seizure of these devices, which will ensure criminals can no longer conduct activities from within the facilities to which they are confined to prevent them causing further hardship to citizens.

Will the Minister of State indicate when a new Garda station site will be identified for Clonmel, which is a very busy urban centre? When will there be an increase in Garda numbers and when will closed circuit television be provided for the town?