Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. I am disappointed the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has left the House given the importance of today's debate.

I congratulate Senator Regan on the timely nature and relevance of the motion tabled. I am an ordinary citizen, a mother and an educator and I am concerned about the growth in crime rates in our society. It should be our aim to leave no stone unturned in protecting our citizens and gardaí. In particular, we should enable and equip the Garda to tackle crime quickly and efficiently. Our gardaí are sitting ducks for anybody to take a pot shot at, which is not good enough for servants of our State.

Public confidence is fast disappearing in the fight against crime. I opened a national newspaper yesterday to find eight major headlines on crime, ranging from rape to murder to attacks on the person. Crime is becoming so commonplace now, my concern is we will get used to it and become immune to hearing about it. Such an attitude would lead to us all being at risk.

We live in a different time and this different environment requires different measures at both proactive and reactive levels. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has good intentions but they are not working adequately in practice. It appears we are fast losing the fight against serious crime.

The motion tabled by Senator Regan outlines the need for a comprehensive plan, of which I will discuss some main points. The first deals with community policing and another with the sources of crime, to which Senator Dan Boyle has alluded. That is an important issue, and to call this debate pantomime politics is insulting.

Another matter on which I wish to focus is the need to equip gardaí in order to ensure they are one step ahead of criminals. The latter have no place in society and it is outrageous that we are being outwitted and outsmarted by them. Ireland is becoming the place for criminals to be but this should not be the case.

The first issue I wish to consider in this regard relates to community policing. I am a member of the pilot policing committee that was established in Galway and I admit that it has been a great development. The committee works in conjunction with the local authority and some of its members are local community representatives. It gathers information and is able to resolve problems in Galway, regardless of the areas in which they occur. However, what good is such a committee if there is a lack of manpower to use the information it has compiled in order to curb the growth of crime? The answer is simple. I spoke to the Garda authorities in Galway this morning and I was informed that in order to implement the concept of community policing, all they need is five community gardaí. I am extremely impressed by the attitude of gardaí in Galway towards curbing the growth of crime.

One of the detective sergeants to whom I spoke earlier informed me that they had taken their eyes off the ball. He stated that in the past local community gardaí had been very good at being the friendly face of officialdom. As crime has become more serious and criminals more hardened, the Garda lost focus.

There are many levels at which crime must be fought. Gardaí must operate at community level. I live in Oranmore, which has a population of over 6,000 but no community garda. The officers to whom I spoke this morning stated that an average of one community garda per 5,000 is required. Perhaps the Minister of State present will pass on my comments on this matter to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and ask him to forward a response to them, indicating what are the plans for the future in this regard.

I fear for our society, particularly if we continue to ignore the 20% to 25% of children in secondary schools that are completely turned off by the education system. The justice and education systems must work in tandem to develop an overall system that is relevant to children in second level education. The ESRI report issued last week stated that by the time the children to whom I refer come to sit the junior certificate, they have already lost their interest in education. I know many of these children and I work with thousands of them each year throughout the country. The exam-driven system that exists at second level has no relevance to their real lives. They are not turned on by it; they are bored by it. There are major discipline problems in classrooms and we need to provide an education system which means something to these children and which will provide them with the skills that will ensure they feel they have a real purpose in life. For example, we could provide them with driver education. These children value driving because they are going out, ripping off cars and joyriding in them. If we teach them to drive, they might have more respect for the vehicles they use. There is a great deal to do in this regard.

Many of the children to whom I refer experience literacy problems. John Lonergan has referred on many occasions to this issue in the context of many of the inmates at Mountjoy Prison. I will, in another guise, be discussing this matter with the Minister for Education and Science. These children need a curriculum to which they can relate and we must provide them with meaningful skills.

It costs the State €100,000 per year each to keep children who become offenders in detention centres or prisons. I commend the youth diversion projects that are in place but these need to be broadened and become more widespread. At a cost of €80,000 per year, 20 young offenders in Galway who have been caught and cautioned on one occasion now have more favourable relations with the police. The success rate of these projects shows that 75% of these young people do not reoffend. What do gardaí do with these individuals? The bring them fishing, for example, in order to build up one-to-one relationships with and get to know them. These children have real personal problems. There needs to be much more of this sort of engagement.

My final point relates to the need for a comprehensive DNA database. We must introduce legislation similar to that which exists in most other countries in order to give gardaí the power to take DNA samples and store them on a comprehensive database. This will enable us to outsmart criminals. Proof of the power of DNA evidence was clearly shown in a case in Galway some years ago involving a rapist who was convicted on the basis of a DNA sample taken from the victim. A match was not found in Ireland because we do not have a DNA database. When the sample was sent to the British authorities, however, a match was found with a DNA sample taken in Wales in respect of a driving infringement. The perpetrator in this case was Irish.

Figures for last year show that there are 114 nationals from other EU countries and 130 non-EU nationals in our prisons. The Garda Síochána's hands are tied and its time is being wasted——