Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have never been shy in this House to profess how wonderful a county I come from in Roscommon is, how safe it is with our low crime rate and how a recent report came out and said it was one of the safest counties in the country to raise a family. Last Friday, however, for the third allocation in a row, we unfortunately were not allocated any additional Garda resources. This was disappointing after raising this issue on numerous occasions. I spoke to someone last weekend and in 2023 and 2024 there was a campaign across Roscommon called Enough is Enough. This was following a spate of late-night robberies where people were coming into the county and able to get out very quickly having robbed a number of premises. I am not going to go through this issue again of trying to raise a Commencement matter or seeing how we as Oireachtas Members go about getting additional Garda resources. The debate I would like to have is about transferring experienced gardaí who have served time in other regions and are now desperate to get back to their home regions or as close to their home regions as possible. When I saw the figures last week, I realised that we had not got any young gardaí of the 167 that were allocated. I also followed up with a few Garda stations and we had not received any of the intra-region transfers from two weeks previously.That is something we should be aiming to facilitate. We should be supporting our gardaí, making their lives easier and improving their quality of life by getting them closer to home where they might have elderly parents. They could bring their own kids back to where they were raised and allow them to access childcare. That is the debate I would like to have in this House, going forward.

I do not want the message to come across that we are not happy with the job our gardaí are doing. We are exceptionally proud of the work they are doing. Some 11,000 people applied to join the Garda last year. That shows we have made it attractive. We have introduced the training positions. There are just over 14,000 gardaí. They need assistance in doing their roles. Transferring that experience back to the regions would assist.