(Cavan): We learned on the last day that this Bill was discussed that the purpose of its introduction is to amend the Police Forces Amalgamation Act, 1925 and amending Acts. At present the strength of the Garda Síochána is fixed by statute and as the Minister told us when introducing the Bill, the maximum permitted strength is 6,000 gardaí, 1,350 sergeants, 70 station sergeants, 110 inspectors, 157 superintendents, 29 chief superintendents, a surgeon and five of the ranks of Commissioner, Assistant-Commissioner and Deputy-Commissioner. We were told that without this Bill it would not be possible for the Minister to increase the force above that strength. The Minister also wishes to create a number of additional inspectors. However, it is rather strange to note that the force now is considerably below the permitted strength. In introducing the Bill the Minister told us that with an increase of 1,000 the force will be brought up to 7,560.
It appears to me that, allowing for wastage, retirement and death, the force now must be less than 7,000. If my mathematics are correct the present permitted strength is 7,722. With a reduction in the working hours of the gardaí pursuant to the Conroy recommendations, and with the increase in crime, it is alarming and seems to be unjustifiable that the strength of the Garda is considerably below the permitted level. We are prepared to facilitate the passage of this Bill through the House because we believe it will give the Minister an opportunity of bringing the strength of the force up to the necessary level. We do not believe that the proposals outlined by the Minister —600 for the coming financial year in addition to 400 in the last year—are sufficient. We hope that with this machinery at the Minister's disposal, he will be able to use his influence with the people who provide the necessary money, to increase the force by about 2,000. We will encourage him to do this because we believe, as do most people, that this increase is necessary.
This Bill provides an opportunity for discussing the force and in the time at my disposal the last day, I was pointing out that it seems to be generally accepted in the House and in the country that the morale of the force has never been so low as it is now. There is discontent in the force at all levels, from ordinary garda level right up to the officer grade. Since I spoke previously I have noticed that further meetings of the Garda Síochána have been held in the south of Ireland to protest about various matters. It does not matter very much for the purposes of my argument what these protests were about but the fact that there were protests is a display of an unhealthy atmosphere in the Garda. Gardaí in Cork have alleged that there were see-saw tactics between the officers and themselves to prevent them attending a meeting held there. They alleged that they were held on duty unnecessarily, to prevent them attending. Regardless of what are the complaints, the fact is that there are complaints and that there is a low morale throughout the force.
It is necessary to put on record, although I do not propose to do so at any great length, that the major cause of the complaints, is interference by the Minister and, more particularly, by the Minister's Department, in the workings of the Garda Síochána. I pointed this out to some extent on the last occasion. It would be healthy if the day-to-day workings of the Garda Síochána were left to the officers of the Garda Síochána. There is general dissatisfaction within the force because of interference by the Minister, by his predecessors and by officers of his Department with the day-to-day workings of the Garda Síochána. There is interference in respect of promotion and also in respect of expenditure, petty and otherwise.
Of course this interference does not take the form of written demand, written requests or written direction, rather it takes the form of niggling telephone calls to the effect that the Minister will wish such and such to be done, or asking whether so-and-so would not consider that such-and-such would be a better approach. It is very seldom that there is any direct demand made or direction given but if people on the promotion list and those at headquarters wish to have a happy life, they believe they must fall in line with these requests. There may have been some improvement since the Minister arrived on the scene. I appeal to him to take a strong stand on this and to ensure that there is the minimum of intervention at departmental level with the force. He should see that there is no unnecessary interference with them. I put my request to the Minister in that way.
I come now to the question of the head of the force. I said previously that I believe it is fundamentally unsound to appoint men to the position of Commissioner with one or two or three years to run. That is a hard thing to have to say. It may sound unkind. It may be said that it is unkind to say to a man who has served well in the force that he should not be appointed Commissioner just because he did not reach the penultimate rung on the ladder until he was 62 or 63 years of age, but it is a hard old life and we must face up to realities.
It is unsound that a man should be appointed Commissioner when he has only two or three years to run. That seems to have been the policy in the force for the last number of years. The result is that when a man thinks he has a chance of being appointed he is certain to fall in line with ministerial and Governmental wishes. When he is appointed the same thing applies because, in a few cases recently, he has to rely on the generosity of the Government to extend his years of service to qualify for full pension. It is hard to stand over that. It is not likely that we will get the best results from a Commissioner who finds himself in that position.
There should be some sort of a top level board within the force which would recommend to the Government and to the Minister a suitable man from within the force. There are precedents for that in other walks of life. It would be a good thing if high-ranking officers, for example, the Commissioner Board, or a certain number of superintendents, were to make recommendations to the Minister with regard to the Commissioner. It would be a deplorable state of affairs if we again reached the stage where we had to go outside the force for a Commissioner. The Commissioner should come from within the force and should come up through the ranks.
The Minister should take steps to ensure that young men of ability are given the opportunity to prove themselves fit for the position of Commissioner if the necessity for going outside the force for the Commissioner is to be avoided. It is very much in the interests of the force that that should be avoided. The way to avoid it is to have a system of spotting comparatively young men of ability and giving them responsibility fairly early in their career. There can be only one Commissioner at a time and there can only be a Commissioner Board of five. It is too late to start thinking about Commissioner material when somebody has just slogged up the ladder and got to a certain stage. There should be some machinery for spotting young men of exceptional ability in the force and giving them positions of extra responsibility at a comparatively young age. It might be that that responsibility would go to their heads but that would be their bad luck. They would have fallen down and they would be passed over.
I dealt with promotion and I do not want to labour it now beyond saying that promotion should be strictly and absolutely on merit. On the last occasion I invited the Minister to publish the recommendations from the Officer Board. As we know there is a system whereby the Commissioner Board consisting of the Commissioner, his two deputies and his two assistants, make recommendations to the Minister with regard to the necessary promotions in the following 12 months from the position of inspector to superintendent and from superintendent to chief superintendent. I put it to the Minister that that list should be published. The Minister said he did not think it should be published because there are more people on it than are likely to be promoted and it might be tough luck on them.
I believe that, in the interests of restoring confidence in the force, the list should be published within the force, and never departed from. The Minister told me on the last occasion that he could stand over the fact that it was strictly adhered to during the 12 months since he took office. He generously offered to let me see the list for last year. I accept the Minister's word —I have no alternative; I am not saying that in any begrudging way—that he adhered strictly to the recommendations and I am glad he did. That has not been the case in the past, but it should be the case in the future.
It is a fact that the morale of the force is low at the moment and I trust the Minister recognises that. He is a practical man and I do not think he could fail to recognise it from reading the newspapers and from listening to members of the force. He is in a better position than anybody else to hear the complaints and to know the trends. Protest meetings have been held already at officer level. Notwithstanding the Conroy Report we had lightening strikes last year and we had protest meetings—and I am now talking about the south of Ireland. The alarming thing is that although the lot of the serving garda has been improved immensely after the Conroy Report— their hours are shorter; their pay is better; they are not obliged to live in barracks; they have more time off— the dissatisfacation is there.
The monetary recommendations of the Conroy Report have been implemented but the more fundamental recommendations, including the very last recommendation in the report that the whole relationship between the force and the Department should be looked at and dealt with, have not been implemented. I leave it to the Minister to do that.
In regard to the position of recruits I am glad the Minister has said that he is waiving the educational examination in respect of those who have passed the leaving certificate examination with a certain standard. I hope he will introduce a minimum educational standard for the force because at the moment there is no such standard. There is a qualifying examination which carries no minimum standard.
I have thought for a long time that it is very doubtful whether four months training at Templemore is adequate to equip a young garda for the complicated and sophisticated duties expected from him immediately he goes on the beat. It is too short a time. At one time there was a refresher course after two years before the recruit was established. I think there is one refresher course subsequent to training but the one to which I refer does not now exist. I think it should be there. I find it hard to understand how a recruit raw from school or from the country and brought to Templemore is to be instructed in all the things in which he should be instructed and acquire all the knowledge he must have in four months. I cannot understand how that can be done and I suggest a longer training period should be given before a recruit is established.
A policeman's career requires a vocation; he must be temperamentally suited to deal with all sorts of people, not at their best but at their worst. Not everybody is temperamentally suited for this sort of life. In general, we have been extremely lucky in the force we have but you come across the occasional member of the force who is temperamentally unsuited for his work and, as in other cases, it is the one person who through no fault of his own is temperamentally unsuitable for the job, or a misfit in other words, who gives the force a bad name. It is not his fault; he should not be in the force but in some other occupation. We never hear much of the 90 or 95 per cent of the force who are perfectly suited for their job and do their work politely and give the best of service but you do hear of the odd member who is accepted in the force but it is not suitable for it and who gets in trouble with the general public and gives the whole force a bad name.
In addition to the educational examination there is an interview which at present is conducted probably by an elderly superintendent or chief superintendent who came up through the ranks 20, 25 or 30 years ago. I believe this minimum type of interview does not establish very much, if anything, and I recommend that these interviews should be conducted by professional persons. We should have a trained psychologist to interview recruits, assess them and decide whether they are suited for the complicated and delicate work required of them later on. There are several precedents for this. On the previous occasion I mentioned the church. I understand religious orders have trained psychologists to discuss matters with young men before they are accepted and this also happens in many other walks of life. I recommend strongly to the Minister that he should have a board of psychologists or whatever number is required to interview recruits, assess them and report on them. This is really in the interests of the candidates as well as of the general public because I cannot visualise anybody more unhappy than a man who finds himself in the Garda but it is temperamentally unsuited to the work and is getting into trouble with the public and with his superiors and his life is miserable. He makes everybody else's life miserable also.
In regard to Templemore, I suggest that the sort of instruction that could be given should not be detailed instruction—I do not know how it could be—in the various statutes these trainees will have to interpret. There would not be time for it. I suggest they should get a broad knowledge of the fundamentals of the law. I am told we are not equipped very well in this country in regard to technical and scientific methods of detection but it is essential that the recruits at Templemore should be instructed on how such technical and scientific aids as are available, work, so that when they go to the scene of a crime they will know what to look for, what could be tested by scientific aids or technical devices. I gather that matter is not very well covered at present in Templemore.
There should be a refresher course at the end of two years such as existed previously but does not now exist. There was another very useful class which applied not only to recruits but which was a daily occurrence in every Garda station, a police duty class. It was held for an hour in the mornings when the barrack party reported for work. The sergeant gave them instruction on some aspect of police duties, some new circular that was issued or some new law that had been introduced. As well as that they had a general short discussion on crime in the locality. I am told these police duty course held every morning were invaluable. They have been dropped, maybe because it would be necessary to pay the members of the force for that hour that was spent on them. I would recommend to the Minister that with the enlarged force which he will now have he should consider re-introducing them.
There are complaints at all levels of the force, and there are particular complaints at district officer level. That is bad, because if these district officers, superintendents and inspectors believe they are not getting a fair crack of the whip things will not work out well. I have told the Minister that meetings are being held by these officers throughout the country. I think it is with his approval, but, perhaps, his approval is not now necessary; anyway they are being held, and the threats are that if the situation is not improved these men will work according to rule. That is further evidence of the unhealthy atmosphere in the Garda Síochána. Several years ago it would have been unheard of that any member of officer status would work to rule.
There are reasons for this. Work has been piled on to these men. Criminal activities of a subversive nature are commonplace all over the country. There has been a considerable strain on the Garda Síochána in the last number of years and there will continue to be a strain, in the foreseeable future, in general, but particularly on the district officers. Their work involves continual checking, reporting and so on. Fatal accidents are becoming common. Road traffic accidents ending in fatalities impose a considerable amount of work on the district officers carrying out investigations, compiling files, reporting to the State Solicitor right up to the Attorney General, briefing the State Solicitor, et cetera. In recent times further work has been passed on to these officers. They are not required to pay witneses' expenses in all courts, in the District Court, Circuit Court and the Central Criminal Court. They are responsible for paying all gardaí travelling expenses and subsistence allowances. The system of medical attendance on the garda has now been changed. The gardaí are rightly entitled to a free choice of doctor. Again, these doctors are paid when they send in their bills instead of annually, and they are paid by the local officers. There are many other smaller accounts that have to be paid.
These men complain that with all this increase in work there has been no increase in staff at the district offices. The staff has been changed, perhaps, in some offices. Members of the force who were acting as clerks have been released and been replaced by lady clerks. However, it is not a qualification for these lady clerks that they should know shorthand. That means that the officer in charge has to dictate or write out in long hand letters that he wants typed. If that is true, it is an appalling waste of time. The answer might be that shorthand is not now as important as it used to be with the advent of dictating machines, but then I am told there are no dictating machines provided. It is a feature of Garda life now that reports in connection with all accidents which have been investigated have to be furnished to solicitors and other interested parties. Surely it is a waste of time hammering these things out in this stage when they could be done on copying machines in a very short time. These machines can be hired from many firms. It might sound ridiculous but there are no adding machines. With all the accounts that have to be paid now an adding machine would be essential equipment.
The force should move with the times. If solicitors and other people were not to provide themselves with dictating machines and copying machines they would not be running their offices economically and giving a proper service to their clients. These offices should be brought up-to-date and the district offices should be provided with adequate staff or equipment to discharge the onerous duties that have recently been passed on to them.
The Garda Síochána is grossly under strength. The Conroy Report did a good job, by and large, because it recognised that we are living in the seventies and that members of the force were not going to put up with the sort of treatment they got in the twenties. As the lot of the gardaí improved the manpower available was reduced. Pre-Conroy a garda worked a minimum of 48 hours which I do not think included meals. He now works a minimum of 42 hours, excluding meals which, in effect, is about 37 hours. It follows from those figures that the improvement in the working week has reduced substantially—some say 25 per cent and others say 12 per cent—the man hours available for police duties and there has been no increase in the force since Conroy.
The Minister recruited 400 this year but that is simply a flea bite. Apart from a reduction in working hours duties have increased and the crime rate has gone up. Before the Minister introduced this Bill the procedure was to recruit 200 men in 1972 and 200 men in 1973. Those figures have now been increased. There were 400 taken in last year and I believe 600 are to be taken in this year. I do not think that is enough when you provide for retirements and natural wastage. I believe a considerable number of men came into the force in 1942 and 1943 and that means there will be substantial retirements in 1972 and 1973. The proposal to increase the force by 1,000 does not seem to mean very much.
The present strength of the force is about 6,800 men. There should be, in accordance with Conroy, 1,625 of these men on rest each day. There are about 500 barrack orderlies and about 300 clerks. That leaves something like 4,375. There should be about 400 men on annual leave each day which reduces the force to about 4,000. When you allow for men who are off ill you get down to under 4,000. The gardaí in the city operate on three 8-hour shifts but that does not apply to some parts of the country. It means, however, that there is between 1,300 and something over 2,000 men available for duty at any one time in city and country. We must be a very peaceful, law-abiding State if that force is able to deal with it.
It is no wonder that the crime rate has increased and the detection rate has declined. I believe the figures I have given are substantially accurate, but even allowing for inaccuracies one way or another it seems that the available force to police the country at any one time, in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Waterford and the Border from one end to the other, is grossly inadequate. We are living in an age when crimes of violence are on the increase and we should be doing something about it. When the Commissioners' next report comes out it will show that there is a fall in the detection rate of up to 20 per cent.
This, as well as the interference from departmental level which I complained about, is leading to a breakdown in morale in the force because the members of the force feel they are not giving the service they should be giving to the public and the public believe they are not getting the service they are entitled to. There is loss of respect for the force among the public and there is frustration within the force. The men feel there is nothing they can do. They fill in their time as best they can.
I believe, mechanisation or no mechanisation, there is no substitute for the man on the beat. This year on a Sunday afternoon my daughter's car —it was a small one—was parked in Grafton Street and was removed. There were three cases in the car which could be seen by anybody passing by. The car was recovered but the suitcases were missing, the mats from the floor and also the covers from the seats. If a couple of gardaí were on patrol in Grafton Street that kind of thing would not happen very often. I am not building my whole case for the men on the beat on this particular incident. I believe that the city is not properly patrolled.
It is foolish to close down Garda stations. A few years ago I would have said that you would have a more efficient force if you closed down barracks and policed the country by motor car and motor cycle patrols. I have completely changed my mind in that respect. I believe that the policy is wrong. Indeed, in times of stress we see that barracks in danger spots are being reopened. Barracks which were closed for years in Monaghan and Cavan are being reopened, and it is right to reopen them. The answer may be that there are exceptional circumstances there at the moment but it proves that the powers that be believe people living in the locality are in a better position to get information than people who drive in from ten, 20 or 30 miles away. That is what the reopening of these Garda barracks means.
It means that garda í living on the spot, mingling with the people, get the confidence of the people and are in a much better position to get information and to do the job than a few people driving in in a squad car and driving away again. Any of us who knows the ordinary country man appreciates that he is suspicious by nature and that he is particularly suspicious of strangers. To a country man everybody is a stranger, unless he is on talking terms or, indeed, on drinking terms with him. Therefore, the system of closing down Garda barracks and replacing them with squad cars and motor cycle patrols does not work. Even if there is only one garda with a sergeant in each of those stations it would be worth maintaining them, from the point of view of detecting subversive activities and crimes of violence and larceny. It is not enough to try to police the country in a general sort of way.
I referred earlier to the depleted force and to the fact that it is not being kept up to strength. Referring to Conroy, I spoke about the amount of work being put on to district officers. In addition, the ordinary rank and file of the Garda are under a strain as well. They are expected to guard banks in every town in Ireland, to guard post offices, to guard the houses of landed gentry, where there are landed gentry, to guard the houses of English people residing in this country and to guard public buildings. They are expected to guard gelignite wherever it is stored. In relation to that, I wonder why gelignite is allowed to be stored indiscriminately in isolated quarries here and there. I am glad to see the Minister reached as I would have done and has decided to take steps to have gelignite collected and brought to be stored in properly secured buildings where it can be adequately protected. To me the mystery is that somebody did not think of this before the recent robberies took place.
These are the sort of things the gardaí are expected to do at the present time. As well, they are expected to act as school attendance officers. One young garda told me he is a school attendance officer in a fairly built-up area and that he has paid only one visit since the schools reopened last September because he had not the time. He is expected to do a hundred other things as well. There are areas where the gardaí are on top of their heads. Some officer in Dublin sends down a circular to know why the transport laws are not being enforced. Everybody knows that if we were to enforce the transport laws we would be obliged to have a squad of gardaí in every station in the country and to listen in in public houses as well to find out what was going on.
My estimate is that we would need an additional 2,000 men and it is no use saying we cannot afford it. There are some things you cannot afford not to do and this is one of the things you cannot economise on. Apart altogether from the circumstances peculiar to the troubles in Northern Ireland which are overspilling here, we are living in an age when violence, protests and disrespect for law and order are on the increase. It is no use burying our heads in the sand and saying these things will not come here. They have come here.
Planning and research were recommended in the Conroy Report and at paragraph 1193 it is recommended:
We are of opinion that a research and planning unit should be established. The functions of this unit should be, inter alia, to plan police methods, to develop new equipment such as communication facilities, to study the design, use and standardisation of vehicles and office equipment, to study new techniques so as to enable the gardaí to deal promptly and effectively with changes in the pattern of crime and behaviour of criminals. This unit would require to be staffed adequately by Garda officers and by civilians trained in technical and management techniques. There is scope to investigate and advise on the unit beat policing system which is in use in Britain.
Surely to goodness that is a refreshing paragraph but it is not one that would not drawn on all of us. It recommends, in ordinary language, that the force needs to be modernised. We need to plan for the future and to see what sort of police force we want for the future and what the police should be doing in the future, how they should be equipped and trained.
A unit has been set up pursuant to this recommendation but it is part of the Commissioner's office. Apart from two civil servants, one of them, of course, from the Department of Finance, there do not appear to be any outside civilians as suggested. On this matter I would go further than the report and say that although we should have our own force exclusively to meet our own requirements, this unit should have on it some people from abroad who have had experience of the sort of crime, the sort of activities that are developing here. I am told the unit which has been set up is part of the Commissioner's office and does not contain the type of experts suggested in the Conroy recommendation. It is an invaluable thing. If paragraph 1193, which calls for the establishment of a research and planning unit, and paragraph 1266 of the Conroy Report which calls for an examination to be carried out by appropriately qualified people into the role, organisation and personnel policy of the force and in particular its relationship with the Department of Justice, if these two were implemented quickly, even at considerable cost, they would in my opinion do a lot to transform the Garda, to modernise it, to restore morale and confidence and to bring about efficiency.
To get efficiency there must be sufficient numbers in the force. I believe that the money voted to the Garda Síochána in this House should be largely under the control of the Garda Síochána, should be, with accountants, of course, checking in the normal way, at the discretion of the experienced officers of the force and should not be the subject of niggling, day-to-day queries from the Department.
If I were to speak in detail about office accommodation we would be here for a considerable time. Office accommodation in Dublin Castle seems to be quite inadequate. The headquarters of the fraud squad, the detection unit, is in a pre-fab. It is a new pre-fab and a vast improvement on where it was before, but the gardaí see the site which has been cleared there and which is now to be used to build a fine office block for the more fortunate State servants, the civil servants.