Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. A lot of what I was going to say has been said by other Senators, but An Garda Síochána adheres to the ethos of the first Commissioner, Michael Staines, in policing not by force of arms but on its moral authority as servants of the people. The preservation of this unique and special bond is built on a strong tradition of policing by consent of the communities they serve and protect. That is very important about our police force in Ireland. If I had been standing in this Chamber six months ago, I would have been talking about the constituency of Roscommon-Galway and how we had three public marches and a number of public meetings about a spate of crimes targeting rural areas, the elderly, and unsupported areas where there were no Garda stations. We had a number of crimes in the area between September and November. Thankfully, with the support of our local service and national bodies, An Garda Síochána has made arrests and is prosecuting the people arrested in relation to those crimes. However, it still left a fear within a vast part of our community. That constituency has one of the oldest demographics in the country. Those people liked, and grew up in, a time when you knew your local garda. You would see your local gardaí. They would be in your local sports club at the weekend, or maybe in the pub selling lottery tickets. They were a member of the community. That is not something we experience nowadays. The job of our gardaí has gotten so admin-intensive that their presence on the street is not what it used to be. I know a lot of gardaí. They are members of our local GAA clubs and soccer clubs. You meet them socially. Some of them are our family members. They are very proud of the job they do and they want to do that to the best of their ability, but they are inhibited by the role they have to take nowadays.

I will talk about rural Ireland as opposed to the total model, but the biggest challenge we have is the vast areas the districts are covering at the moment. In my own area it could take two hours to travel from one end to the other. Quite often you might only have one or two cars working on a particular night. This is known. People can make phone calls and have An Garda in one part of the county or district, while they are doing something in another part of the district. This is demoralising for gardaí on the ground not having the resources to be out there trying to protect and serve the people within their districts. Rural staffing is also a major issue. The Minister mentioned earlier the number of admin staff they have, but I know a lot of gardaí from the Roscommon-Galway constituency who are based in other parts of the country and would do anything they could to get back to live in their own district and area. That is something the Minister might look at. It might not necessarily be in their own district, but in a neighbouring district if there is an opportunity to give them a bit of weighting for moving back to those areas. We need to attract our members back to rural Ireland.

Thankfully, rural crime in my area is not as bad as it is in certain other areas of the country. However, going back to the demographic living in these areas, any crime and issue like that creates fear and an element whereby people do not go out to socialise. They stay at home. They do not go out at a certain time of night. Sunday night past, in the town of Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, there was a reported mugging and robbery of a handbag at 7 o'clock in the evening, in a busy market town on a Sunday. This town had a large march recently, back in November, looking for additional gardaí on the ground. This happening has lit the fires, and the community is looking for more gardaí on the ground. They are served by a different Garda station during the weekends and the presence and numbers is the biggest barrier.

I compliment the community policing model we have in this country. I ran a few information sessions with our local community policing unit and while it was a great opportunity to bring older people into centres to understand what the community garda did, it also introduced the community gardaí to these people and gave them an opportunity to give addresses and phone numbers to allow the gardaí to go out and meet them. That is something I encourage them to do.