Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----that he should be wary of what is written in newspapers. Not everything one reads is necessarily accurate, but I am not going to get into that because what was written was inappropriate. Raising that this evening is inappropriate and does not deserve the dignity of any detailed response.

I was also surprised at something else Senator O'Donovan said which on reflection he may think about and on some other occasion withdraw it or expand on it in some way. I am very conscious it is only a week since Detective Garda Donohoe was laid to rest and he said this evening, and I thought it was an extraordinary piece of criticism, that he was not sure - I am paraphrasing what he said - that everything necessary was being done with regard to the investigation into the barbaric murder that took place. This is not a moment to be criticising an investigation into the callous murder of a member of the force when there are dedicated members of that force, together with the PSNI, devoting all of their energies to identifying those responsible and an evidential trail that will facilitate them being brought to justice. I hope the Senator would withdraw what he said.

I visited Dundalk Garda station and met many of the late Detective Garda's colleagues last Monday week. They were very determined to bring to justice the people responsible. They were people who clearly admired the Detective Garda who had been mercilessly mown down. They were very stressed, and I do not believe we should be criticising them or their colleagues. It is not appropriate to try to raise the issue in what is, to be clear, a debate that is a little bit about the old politics of posturing and party political game playing.

There is a basic hypocrisy, as other Members of the Seanad have said, about tonight's Fianna Fáil motion. Why I am I saying that? One of the many headaches I inherited when I was appointed Minister for Justice and Equality in March 2011 was attempting to unravel the expenditure ceilings for the justice sector which were contained in the Fianna Fáil-led Government's national recovery plan, to which Senator Landy referred. I have a copy of the plan here as a primer for any member of Fianna Fáil who may need to read it. I can hand them the relevant page because I made an additional photocopy of it. If these ceilings had been applied they would have resulted in devastating cuts in Garda services which I, as Minister for Justice and Equality, would not and could not in any circumstances stand over, even in the circumstances of the troika wanting us to effect certain cuts.

The Fianna Fáil national recovery plan was unacceptable and would have put the Garda Commissioner in an impossible position. Fortunately, I was able to secure additional funding over the three year period 2012-2014 to ensure that the Garda Commissioner, and An Garda Síochána, could continue to deliver an effective policing service. I could not do anything about 2011. I inherited the Estimates. They were there when I came into office.

In summary, for the justice sector in 2012 I secured ¤2.243 billion, which was an additional ¤118 million over and above the Fianna Fáil allocation of ¤2.125 billion. For 2013 I secured funding of ¤2.2 billion, which was ¤191 million over and above the Fianna Fáil allocation of ¤2.009 billion, and for 2014 I secured funding of ¤2.065 billion, which was ¤105 million over and above the original Fianna Fáil allocation of ¤1.96 billion. If the Fianna Fáil national recovery plan had been implemented - it was the November 2010 plan, published ten days before the deal was done with the troika and designed to implement the policies of financial reductions the troika was seeking - the effect of that on An Garda Síochána for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 would have on average resulted in their being ¤90 million less available in each of those three years than is available this year, last year and for 2014. The Fianna Fáil finances would have devastated the Garda and rendered it impossible. They were based on funny figures as well because the funny figures set out, and Senators have referred to it, a roadmap for the reduction in the numbers in the Garda force but on the figures, even the numbers it was projected would be retained were unsustainable because the funding would not have been available to pay them. It is as simple as that. That was the legacy Fianna Fáil was happy to bequeath to me as justice Minister.

I do not like engaging in too much of what I would describe as the caricature of the party political toing and froing that goes on because I am conscious that we do very good legislative work in this House but it is very difficult for me to listen to some of the criticisms that were made this evening and the hypocrisy of Fianna Fáil as it attempts to erase its national recovery plan from public memory and engage in extraordinary political revisionism.

This motion is also critical of the reduction in Garda numbers. Once again, the proposers seem to have forgotten their own national recovery plan. That plan details where things were going to go with Garda numbers - this is an extract from it. That plan detailed a reduction in Garda numbers from a strength of 14,500, as has already been said, on 31 December 2010 to 13,500 at the end of 2011. It proposed further reductions to 13,350 by 31 December 2012, 13,150 by 31 December 2013 and then to 13,000 by 31 December 2014. In fact, the number of gardaí in the force today exceeds by approximately 80 the number Fianna Fáil intended to bring about by the end of 2012.

In terms of where the figures were funny, in the context of funny money, if the funding had remained as it was I do not believe I would have had the funding to pay for the numbers who are in the force in 2012 or the numbers we have now in 2013. Apart from the financial figures being a little odd in that context there is one part of this which is common sense because on average approximately 350 members of the Garda retire by way of natural retirement every year, therefore, the projected figure will be down to 13,150 by the end of this year and then to 13,000 by December 2014, but all recruitment was cancelled. Natural retirement would have got us to 2014 below the 13,000 figure. We would have been down to 12,750 or 12,700 members of the force.

The Garda Commissioner has succeeded in maintaining essential front-line policing services by the implementation of important and necessary reforms, including the new Garda rostering system. I also made additional funding available last year, and again in 2013, for the purchase of vehicles for the Garda fleet. Members might be interested to know that no provision of any nature was made for the purchase of Garda cars, and I want to refer to the exact figures because there is a typographical error in the script. There was no provision of any nature made for the purchase of Garda cars in 2009; 2010 is indicated in the script.

There was some provision in 2010. No new cars were purchased in 2009 but 146 were purchased in 2010. When I came into office inheriting an Estimate figure for 2011 we were able to purchase only 52 new vehicles. Some 213 new vehicles were purchased for the Garda in 2012, which is more than the total of 198 purchased between 2009 and 2011. I want to be very clear about those figures. This year I have dedicated funding of ¤5 million which will allow for the purchase of a significant number of new vehicles. It is an increased fund despite the reduction in the funding available to me generally because I was able, with the goodwill and assistance of my good friend and colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, to negotiate additional funding at Estimates time to ensure we could renew the Garda fleet.

The Fianna Fáil motion refers to the reopening of the Garda College at Templemore to Garda recruitment. Recruitment to An Garda Síochána was ended by my predecessor Dermot Ahern. The most recent recruits to enter Templemore did so in 2009 and the last substantial number of recruits graduated in June 2011. No recruitment took place in 2010. In Fianna Fáil's national recovery plan, no reference is made to the recommencement of Garda recruitment. The question of new recruitment is under active consideration and it is an issue that I will address with my Cabinet colleagues during the course of this year, because it is my objective to maintain the Garda force at 13,000. It is worth noting that the college is not closed or mothballed, as some people have suggested. It continues to provide professional development training to Garda members and reserve gardaí. It also provides employment to the local community. On Friday week I will be in Templemore for the graduation of some new members of the Reserve Garda force who have been trained there.

It goes without saying that no Minister would choose to have to operate in this appalling financial position. Notwithstanding this, despite what I said about having additional funds available year on year, I still have less, but not as low as the Fianna Fáil figures went. For example, in 2012 I had ¤100 million less than was available in the preceding year. This year I have ¤62 million less than was available in 2012, but the position is not as drastic as it would have been under the Fianna Fáil national recovery plan. Despite the difficulties I have done everything possible to maintain Garda resources at the highest possible level. A budget of more than ¤1.4 billion is available for the force in 2013 - the major portion of justice funding. By any standards, this is a substantial amount.

I am also very pleased that the provision of three new Garda divisional headquarters for Kevin Street in Dublin, Galway and Wexford was included in the special Government stimulus package announced last July. The projects are to be delivered by means of a public private partnership and discussions are currently taking place between the relevant agencies in light of the Government announcement.

When I entered office there were 703 Garda stations in the Garda station network. The network, essentially, was as designed and inherited by us from colonial times in 1922. Some 39 Garda stations were closed in 2012, eight of which had not been open for a number of years, but no Minister had had the courage to announce that they would never be reopened. A pretence was maintained that some day someone would refurbish them. Their closure was a paper exercise which simply recognised reality, a reality that had been concealed by my immediate predecessors. Many more were only one- or two-member stations. Following a comprehensive assessment by the Garda Commissioner of the Garda station network in 2012, a further 100 were listed for closure in the Commissioner's policing plan for 2013. Ninety-five of these closed last Thursday 31 January, while the remainder will close in the coming months.

The Garda station network was inherited from the Royal Irish Constabulary network in 1922 on the foundation of the State. Such a large-scale static deployment of resources is no longer appropriate in the present day as the transport and communications infrastructure has been transformed beyond recognition. The Garda Síochána has a class-leading police computer system, a state-of-the-art digital radio system, and a transport fleet which is currently receiving significant investment. The new Garda roster currently being piloted provides a better match between Garda availability and policing demand. All of these developments enable the Garda Síochána to be more mobile and flexible and to deliver a more effective policing service.

We need to be honest about the level of policing service that was capable of being provided from the stations listed for closure in 2013. Of the 100 stations on the list, 98% opened part-time, 94% opened for three hours a day or less, 88% were manned by one Garda and only 5% were manned by three or more Garda personnel. Some critics have complained that the station closures will save only small amounts of money, but to do so completely misses the point. The objective is to maximise the time that our well-trained and highly skilled gardaí spend on operational duties. This is about smart policing and the most efficient and effective deployment of Garda resources. I have listened with interest to comments made by at least one retired member of the Garda, an assistant commissioner, who said he did not know what smart policing was. Everyone here knows what a smartphone is. Would they like a smartphone or the old type of phone? Smart policing is very simple. It means there is flexibility about policing policies, with problem areas being targeted as the need arises. It means there are specified targeted operations such as Operation Fiacla, with the Garda force deployed on a mobile basis where necessary, as is the case in dealing with the burglary gangs around the country and where special operations are needed to deal with fuel laundering or drugs. It is not about keeping gardaí in Garda stations doing administrative work and not using their skills and training for crime prevention and crime detection. Smart policing is a term that is well understood throughout Europe, not just in Ireland. It is remarkable that someone who has retired from the force should find it so difficult to understand the concept, but I recognise that some people think we should do things the way we always did them in the past and there is no room for change. Some people find change difficult. We must change to deal with criminals who are changing their methodologies and the manner in which they target communities.

It is the view of the view of the Garda Commissioner that a country the size of Ireland, with a population of 4.5 million, does not need 700 Garda stations in the 21st century. It is nothing less than scaremongering to suggest that reducing that network to 564 Garda stations is a cause for fear and anxiety. Northern Ireland, which has 1.5 million people, has 83 police stations and the objective is to reduce the number to around 50 by 2015. Scotland, with a population of 5.2 million, has 340 police stations. It is not about bricks and mortar but intelligent and targeted police work.

The Garda Commissioner has concluded that a more effective and efficient policing service can be provided by releasing the maximum possible number of gardaí for front-line service in our communities. This is his professional opinion, and it would be entirely wrong for me, as Minister for Justice and Equality, to second-guess his expertise in this matter. I support him. I am not passing the buck as some people have suggested. The last thing we need is a Minister for Justice and Equality who thinks he should make operational decisions for the Garda Síochána when we have a Garda Commissioner who has the required expertise. He is the person who manages the Garda force and is at the centre of the operational decisions that are made.

It is unfortunate and regrettable that some public representatives have been fuelling public fear regarding the impact of the closure of Garda stations. In fact, I am advised by the Garda Commissioner that Garda station closures in 2013 will result in an extra 61,000 Garda patrol hours.

For those who believe the stations provide a deterrent to criminals, the sad fact is that this is not true. Clear evidence of this reality was shown by the appalling events of the robbery of Oldcastle post office on 31 January following the holding captive of two people at their home. Oldcastle post office is adjacent to the Garda station to which, in turn, four Garda members are assigned. The station is scheduled to be open for three hours a day on weekdays and Sundays and two hours on Saturdays, subject to manpower availability. The presence of the station next to the post office was no deterrent to the robbery that took place there. We must move beyond the simplistic notion that Garda stations are a deterrent to serious criminals.

Some have painted the Garda station consolidation process as an attack on rural Ireland. However, the two largest stations listed for closure in 2013 are Stepaside in my constituency of Dublin South and Kill O' the Grange in the Tánaiste's constituency of Dún Laoghaire. In 2012, the three largest Garda stations to be closed were in Dublin - Harcourt Terrace, Whitehall and Dalkey. Let there be no misconception. The objective of modernising and re-calibrating the Garda station network is to ensure that Garda resources are used in the best and most efficient way possible, in both rural and urban areas, to the benefit of all law-abiding people who reside in this State.

Stepaside Garda station is situated three miles from Dundrum Garda station which Senator White mistakenly mentioned earlier.