Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I appreciate he is responding for the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter. I am surprised, as the Minister has said, that the Department of Justice and Equality is not able to get figures from the Garda Síochána about the extra staff working tonight. I have spoken to gardaí working in different stations across Dublin city and they have said that they have them because obviously they know how many extra gardaí are working tonight. They say they need to staff the night as if it was a very busy Saturday night rather than an ordinary Thursday. I ask the Minister to ask the Minister for Justice and Equality to make an effort to seek those figures from the Garda. There is a district network there and it is not very difficult to ask the superintendent of each district to report back on the additional staff needed to be rostered to make Arthur's day safe.

I note from the response the Department of Justice and Equality supplied to the Minister that the organisers of some of the events this evening have agreed to pay for the policing costs, with "some" being the key word. I ask the Minister to convey to the Minister for Justice and Equality my strong view that because this is a commercial night from which it will make significant profit, Diageo should cover the all of the costs of Arthur's day. It should also be done in a consistent way across the country. I gather considerable pressure has been put on the company by the Garda in Cork, which is why the story is on the front page of the Irish Examiner today. Gardaí have been commenting to newspapers and raising it as an issue in recent weeks and that seems to be the reason behind the response in Cork. Is the same thing happening in Dublin and in other cities?