Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House and for taking decisions in respect of proper management of the Garda force in this country. Two Government Ministers were severely criticised recently because decisions were taken affecting particular areas and false allegations were made. Now, however, the Minister for Justice and Equality has taken a decision that affects his own constituency and we have not seen any headlines in the newspapers on the taking of that decisive action, because he believed it was the correct decision to make.

We have seen the figures showing that 94% of the Garda stations to be closed were open for three hours or less. Do people want to keep them open even if that means keeping them open for 15 minutes in the day? If that is the kind of system they want, it will not provide a very good service for the local community in any area. The figures clearly show that there will be 61,000 extra Garda patrol hours available as a result of this change. We have all seen that there are 83 police stations in Northern Ireland for a population of 1.4 million, while there are 340 police stations in Scotland for a population of 5.2 million. We are moving with the times by creating an efficient Garda force and providing backup support to the local community. Everyone in the community has a role to play in working with and protecting each other and making sure that people assist the gardaí in preventing criminal activity. The ordinary person does have a part to play. I have seen this work very effectively in my constituency of Cork North Central. Over the past 18 years, I have been working with the local community policing service. One project involved training 50 young people who had dropped out of school. The vast majority of those young people - 50 at any one time - were referred to us by gardaí working with the local community and young people. We carried out a survey of those 50 young people because there is a different group every year. Five years after leaving the training system, the vast majority of them were in full-time employment. The records also showed that the vast majority of their fathers or grandfathers had never worked. This was the positive contribution the Garda made in that area. The gardaí on the north side of Cork city meet with all of the local communities on a regular basis, making sure that if there are issues that need to be dealt with, they are highlighted and dealt with. The work being done by the Garda is very positive, and long may it continue.