Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am conscious that this is the last Order of Business of this session. However, we are also heading into the budgetary cycle and it is vital that in September we have a debate on the requirements of the budget.

I raise the money that will be made available for the recruitment and appointment of gardaí. We have become desensitised to what are often considered minor breaches of the peace in certain areas. For example, Ennis is one of the finest county towns in the country.Last week, in one particular estate, a woman who lives alone had her car destroyed by two thugs with hatchets late at night. They broke all the windows and damaged all the panels on the car. This is a pattern of intimidation that does not even get reported in the media anymore because it is below the surface. That woman, however, is out of her home and will never be able to live there again. She is 60 years of age and has worked all her life. She has worked hard and raised her family but, at this stage, finds herself with no possibility of returning to her home. That says to me that as a society we have become somewhat desensitised to this kind of intimidation and activity.

Of course, drug dealing and the masterminds of that particular practice are at the core of all this. It feeds into a difficulty in the recruitment and retention of gardaí. I looked at the statistics. County Clare lost almost 7% of its Garda numbers between 2019 and now. On the face of it, that might not seem like a big number. Gardaí are working very hard to try to address these issues but there are bigger fish to fry and they have to concentrate on that. They are now spread more thinly because of the reconfiguration of services between counties Clare and Tipperary. Garda management and gardaí on the ground are working night and day, might and main, to address these issues but we need numbers. We also need to recognise the profession of garda. We need to pay gardaí adequately, provide the necessary funding to recruit more and put in place the kind of regime that targets these masterminds of the drug trade who are in every village and town. There are a couple of kingpins and, if anything is said, they will intimidate and it goes below the radar. We have to call a halt to that.