Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second the Order of Business as proposed by Senator Chambers. I wish to bring up a few issues today. Under the Order of Business last week, I brought up the lack of gardaí on the streets of Newbridge. Making our streets safe and secure is a huge issue around the country. When comparing three towns within the midlands; I mentioned that Portlaoise and Tullamore have 160 and 73 members of the Garda, respectively, while Newbridge has 44 gardaí, of whom ten are in a regional unit and so effectively only has 34. That is simply not good enough. Twice I have tried to put this in as a Commencement matter, and I accept the Cathaoirleach's ruling that it cannot be put in for the Minister for Justice. However, I attended a joint policing committee, JPC, meeting on Monday evening at which Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was present and while I put in that question twice, I did not get a response. My point is we must have some type of forum where we can discuss and bring up issues around Garda numbers. If we believe the people we are representing are not adequately served in terms of Garda numbers, we must have that facility. We might possibly have the Minister here to have a debate about the general issue of keeping our streets safe and secure. We talk about it quite a bit in terms of incidents that happen and violence on our streets. If we do not have our streets lit by our local authorities, and Kildare County Council is at fault in Newbridge because some of the lighting is substandard, and if we do not have enough gardaí on the beat, there is a serious problem.

I also raise the serious lack of testing capacity at Punchestown Racecourse, which covers both north and south Kildare. For example, a parent of a child who had symptoms of Covid contacted me. She was not comfortable returning her child to school until a negative PCR test was received, which is very responsible parenting and shows thinking of everybody within the community. The parent monitored the website for a few days, waiting for an appointment, and nothing. Portlaoise was also booked up. The closest available appointment was quite a distance away, in Tullamore, a journey of more than an hour. That is a long way to bring a sick child, but also is very difficult if somebody does not have private transport. I have also heard reports of people being left queuing in the freezing cold with young children. At the end of last week, County Kildare's 14-day Covid-19 incidence rate was above the national average. The HSE needs to intervene and adequately resource our testing facilities, or possibly set up another testing facility in Newbridge in south Kildare, which is what it did before. Our testing capacity needs to be increased. We need to ensure that people who need a PCR test get one as quickly as possible.