Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank an tAire for her reply on that issue. I mention a scenario where resources are needed or if objectives or targets have not been satisfied. I support the idea of the annual service plan. From my time as chair of a JPC in Dublin city, there was a practice where once a year the chief superintendent would engage with all of the stakeholders of the committee and ask them for their submissions in advance of the end of the year to be included then in the service plan for the following year. My concern is that in this piece of the Bill we are missing an opportunity to extend the buy-in and support for the annual service plan.

What it does is say that the service plan will be prepared by the Garda Commissioner, that it will be presented to the Minister and that the Policing Authority is involved but it is all so removed from communities, including communities that the Garda has to serve. The Garda relies on the support of those communities to succeed and to increase safety in our communities. I would have hoped that in the preparation of the annual service plan, the legislation, as it does later, would include the community safety partnerships in this section. These are meant to be community-based organisations that will, within each of our local communities, draw in all of the stakeholders.

There is an opportunity in this part of the Bill for us to include a requirement for the community safety partnerships to have a role in inputting and determining the objectives of the annual service plan. That should not just be a role for them to feed into the national policing service plan but we should have a top-down approach, involving the objectives of the Government, the Policing Authority and the Commissioner, and a bottom-up approach as well. There could be a meeting then in the middle where there would be a strong consensus and buy-in from all of the stakeholders. We all recognise that the Garda, on its own, cannot ensure our safety. It needs the support of the community to do so. Was consideration given to including a requirement, in this section on the preparation and evaluation of annual policing plans, for a specific statutory role for the community safety partnerships?