Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, for coming in to take this Commencement matter personally. It reflects the importance he attaches to CCTV in communities. CCTV gives incredible reassurance to people. It is a significant deterrent to crime. I am a member of the joint policing committee in Clare and I notice that CCTV cameras are better in some places than in others. According to An Garda Síochána and others they have worked a dream in Limerick city where there is a very elaborate and comprehensive system in operation. There is also an extremely good community CCTV system in operation in south Kildare and in other areas.

Does the Minister have a plan to unify all these systems, to introduce minimum standards and maybe have a service level agreement with a company to provide them? Does he agree that there should be linkages between the local authority, An Garda Síochána, the Department of Justice and Equality and community groups? What does he believe is best practice for the roll out of CCTV? It is important in preventing and identifying the perpetrators of crime. We will never quantify the number of crimes a good CCTV system will prevent. As information and communications technology, ICT, improves, for example, it is possible to view images from a CCTV on a mobile phone, the success of such schemes must also improve. It makes sense that the Government would go into partnership with local authorities in supporting An Garda Síochána and community groups to roll out as good a network of closed circuit televisions as it can.