Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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1037. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of liquor licensing inspections carried out by gardaí in the R district within DMR on pubs, clubs and so on in the years 2022 and to-date in 2023, in tabular form; the frequency in which these liquor licensing inspections that are carried out within this district; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18215/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, in accordance with the Garda Síochána Act 2005 (as amended), the Garda Commissioner is responsible for the general management and administration of An Garda Síochána, including liquor licensing inspections. As Minister, I have no role in these matters.

I am informed by the Garda authorities that inspections of licensed premises, during which no offence is identified, are recorded on PULSE under incident type 'Liquor Licensing Inspection of Premises No Offence Disclosed'. If an offence is disclosed during an inspection, it is recorded as an offence of the relevant type. As such, there is no data available on the number of inspections where an offence is disclosed and it is not possible to provide the percentage of premises that were in breach of the legislation.

I am further informed that an increase in inspections of licenced premises took place as part of Operation Navigation, commencing in July 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic and that inspections have not been as common as restrictions have been removed.

I  am informed by the Garda authorities that a search of PULSE was conducted querying both incident type 'Liquor Licensing Inspection of Premises No Offence Disclosed' and a number of other relevant incident types (e.g. Test Purchasing of Intoxicating Liquor) in the R District.

As the data set falls below the threshold of 10 incidents in each year, the Garda authorities are not in a position to provide this data for data protection reasons.