I move:
That a sum not exceeding £17,814,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1988, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Justice, and of certain other services administered by that Office, and for payment of a grant-in-aid.
I am moving this Estimate on behalf of the Minister for Justice who is attending the Anglo-Irish Conference in Belfast today, and I propose that the six Votes, 20 to 25, inclusive, be taken together.
The total Estimate for the six Votes in the Justice Group is £366,761,000, a decrease of £6,907,000 or 1.88 per cent below the Estimate for these Votes in 1987. The Estimate is made up as follows:
£ |
|
Vote 20 — Office of the Minister for Justice |
17,814,000 |
Vote 21 — Garda Síochána |
273,053,000 |
Vote 22 — Prisons |
57,561,00 |
Vote 23 — Courts |
11,246,000 |
Vote 24 — Land Registry and Registry of Deeds |
6,983,000 |
Vote 25 — Charitable Donations and Bequests |
104,000 |
Pay and allowances, etc., account for 82 per cent of the total Estimates and show an increase of 1 per cent compared with 1987.
The net provision for the Garda Síochána Vote for 1988 is £273.053 million. Salaries, allowances and overtime account for over £205 million of this amount and the superannuation provision is £41.6 million. The other major items are £9.67 million for travelling, subsistence, compensation and miscellaneous expenses; £7.65 million for Garda transport; £5.93 million for the purchase, rental and maintenance of radio, computer, office and other equipment; £5.52 million for postal and telecommunications services and £2.25 million for uniforms and accessories.
The overall financial allocation for the Garda Síochána this year represents an increase of 1 per cent over the 1987 allocation. While the allocations under some individual headings show a reduction as compared with last year, I must emphasise that, in deciding on the financial allocations that could be made for all the various services, the Government took particular account of the vital importance of the Garda service to the community. The financial provision made for the force reflects the Government's concern with preserving that service to the greatest possible extent.
The provision for salaries and allowances takes account of the application to the Garda Síochána of the restrictions on public service numbers announced in the 1987 budget. However, even in these times of necessary economic stringencies, the Government have shown their commitment to the Garda Síochána by their proposal to make 1,000 appointments over the three-year period 1989 to 1991 from a recruitment competition to be held later this year. This competition heralds a new era in Garda recruitment in that new entry qualifications and recruitment procedures and a radical new training programme are being introduced. Briefly, candidates will be required to have achieved an educational standard of at least Grade D in five subjects in the Leaving Certificate or equivalent, including Irish, English and Mathematics. Candidates will have to undergo an intelligence test and final selection will be by means of a competitive interview.
The new Garda training programme gives effect to the recommendations of the Walsh Committee on Garda Training. Under the new programme training will be ongoing over a period of two years. In that time recruits will spend 42 weeks in all the training centres in Templemore and the balance of their time undergoing on-the-job training at selected stations. There will be an emphasis during training on the development of practical policing skills and recruits will also be given some grounding in the basics of criminology, behavioural science, psychology, public relations, communications, social science and management skills. It is expected that details of the proposed Garda recruitment competition will be announced shortly.
The reduced allocation for Garda overtime reflects the decision to abolish the 15 minute pre-duty "parading time" in the Dublin Metropolitan area and in the cities of Cork, Limerick and Waterford and to re-roster certain specialist groups in the force. As the Minister has previously indicated to the House, the Garda authorities are satisfied that none of these changes will seriously affect the effectiveness of the force.
While the maximum economies have to be made in all areas of expenditure on the Garda Síochána, specific reductions have been made in the provisions for uniforms and transport. The provision of £2.25 million for uniforms shows a reduction of £0.25 million over the 1987 allocation. The particularly high allocations for Garda uniforms in 1986 and 1987 allowed for the introduction of the new Garda uniform. The provision of £7.65 million for Garda transport requirements reflects a reduction of £250,000 for the purchase of vehicles and a small reduction in the provision for maintenance and running expenses having regard to the reduced price of petrol. I am satisfied that these savings can be achieved without any serious effect on Garda resources.
Notwithstanding the present difficult economic situation, the necessary resources are being made available to enable the modern technological facilities required by the Garda to be provided. The new national communications network was planned and designed specifically to meet Garda requirements. The rural part of the network is operating very effectively in all Garda stations outside the Dublin Metropolitan Area and a sophisticated new radio communications system for the Dublin Metropolitan area is planned to come into operation later this year. Approximately £20 million was spent on the Garda communications network system until the end of last year. A further £3.5 million is being provided this year and this amount is sufficient to meet all the commitments which will arise at this stage of the project.
The Garda also have modern computer facilities at their disposal. These facilities continue to be improved and there is provision of £1.083 million in the 1988 Estimate to allow for further development in the Garda computer systems.
As the House is aware, the Garda Commissioner recently made a number of proposals for changes in organisation and procedures in the Garda Síochána and the Minister has approved these proposals. Collectively they will have a significant impact on Garda performance. The Minister has also recently announced the establishment of a Garda Advisory Group. This group will act as a source of advice to the Minister on Garda matters in relation to which professional skills and expertise, drawn from outside the Garda Síochána, can be expected to be of particular value.
I hope that the various measures to which I have referred will underline the fact that every effort is being made to ensure that Garda resources are deployed as effectively as possible in meeting our policing needs and that the potential of these resources is tapped to the full. Overall, I am satisfied that all essential policing needs are being fully met and I am confident that the Garda Síochána will continue to respond in a very positive way to the many demands on their services.
The problem of crime is a matter of constant concern to the Government. We must never sit back and say we have reached an acceptable level of crime. We must recognise that crime is an inevitable feature of a modern democratic society and indeed it features in our society at a low rate by international standards. We have to accept it as a price to be paid for democracy and concentrate our minds on it as a problem which will always be with us, albeit in different forms and different degrees.
The Garda authorities have shown over the years their commitment and ability to handle the various forms, and the at one stage extremely worrying level, of crime in our society. The level of recorded indictable crime at the end of 1987 had in fact decreased by over 17 per cent since 1983 and in that period we have had to contend with the emergence of various disturbing forms of crime such as drug abuse, attacks on the elderly, joy-riding and armed raids. Such crimes have been and are being successfully controlled by a combination of Government initiatives and special operational measures and, as a result, the statistics for the end of 1987 indicate that the incidence of all these types of crime has dropped significantly over the past few years.
However, we cannot become complacent. The crime fighters' work is never done. Indeed this prompts me to make reference to the recent publicity in the news media about an increase in crime in the first four months of this year. It certainly is important that any increase in crime is carefully monitored and analysed and the necessary and appropriate steps taken to counter any problem that emerges. However, crime is too big a concern for us to permit of a rash response and we must, therefore, be careful not to react inappropriately, particularly when inaccurate statistics are quoted.
The Garda Commissioner in a press statement gave the correct figures for the first four months of the year, an increase of 3.5 per cent for the entire country, representing a 9.13 per cent increase in the Dublin area and a decrease of 4.9 per cent elsewhere. The Garda authorities are monitoring the situation closely and are responding and will respond actively where special measures prove necessary. However, I would be at pains to emphasise that statistics relating to incidence of crime over short periods of time are only of very limited value as indicators of long term tends and indeed the preliminary indications are that the level of recorded indictable crime for the country as a whole for the first five months of this year is broadly in line with that for the corresponding period last year.
However, we must be realistic in the role we expect the Garda to play in the fight against crime. The Garda cannot provide round-the-clock protection for every home and every business in the country but they can help by encouraging the community to take appropriate steps to help themselves. This the Garda do by offering crime prevention advice to the public, encouraging such basic precautions as ensuring doors and windows have adequate locks, that homes and cars are not left unlocked and unattended and that large amounts of cash are not carried. The Garda have also encouraged increased community involvement in crime prevention by way of initiatives such as neighbourhood watch. This particular success story continues to grow and there are now almost 600 neighbourhood watch schemes involving 145,000 households in existence throughout the country. That the operation is a success appears evident from the growth in the number of participating households. However, the schemes are being formally evaluated to assess their impact on crime.
I turn now to the Prisons Vote. About three-quarters of the total current expenditure provided for in this Vote is in respect of subhead A which covers salaries, wages and allowances. It is obvious, therefore, that in attempting to control expenditure on this Vote particular attention must be paid to staff costs.
When speaking in the Estimates debate last year, the Minister informed the House that he was not happy with the level of dependence on overtime working inherent in the operation of the prison system and that this was an area to which he intended to pay special attention.
In 1986 overtime working in the prison service cost £13.4 million and, while this was partly explained by staff shortages in the light of the increase of 50 per cent or so in the number of prisoners in custody since 1982, successive Ministers for Justice had also recognised that inherent defects in the rostering arrangements were also a major factor in the level of overtime working. Following the recruitment of almost 200 extra staff in late 1986 and early 1987, it was possible to eliminate much of the overtime which had been arising because of the need to cope with the increases in the numbers in custody and expenditure was reduced to £10.3 million. However, I think it will be clear that, even with that reduction, the level of overtime expenditure was still far too high.
Following a review of the matter, it was evident that further significant reductions in overtime and an increase in staff could only be efficiently achieved in the context of addressing the inherent defects in the rostering arrangements. These defects centred around the fact that the period between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the institutions — the prisoners' evening recreation period — was staffed almost exclusively on overtime. In the circumstances, when making the 1988 financial provision for the prison service, the Government decided that the overtime provision should be £6.3 million and that a further 200 extra staff should be recruited, in conjunction with the introduction of a revised rostering system.
As was previously explained, negotiations with the Prison Officers' Association on a revised roster had been taking place for over three years. By the end of January last, it became clear that there was no prospect of agreement. Clearly, the lack of agreement could not have been allowed to jeopardise the creation of jobs for 200 people. Accordingly, new rostering arrangements designed to reduce dependence on overtime were introduced in the various prisons in the earlier part of this year. The House will be aware of the opposition of the Prison Officers' Association to this approach and of the general course of subsequent developments, culminating in the withdrawal of labour by members of the Prison Officers' Association which lasted from 16 April to 14 May of this year.
The agreement between the Minister and the association which led to the settlement of the dispute essentially provided that there would be an independent review of actual rostering arrangements and that any claims in relation to compensation would be processed under the conciliation and arbitration scheme. The House will appreciate the importance — in the context of control of public service pay generally — which had to be attached to maintaining the line that no special arrangements in relation to pay should be made available to the Prison Officers' Association beyond those available to other staff. Arrangements are being made for a copy of the settlement terms to be lodged in the Library of the House.
Professor Basil Chubb has been appointed to carry out the review of rostering arrangements provided for in the agreement and thanks are due to him for agreeing to undertake this work. Before moving on from this subject, I am sure the House will join with me in paying tribute to all those who contributed to the successful running of the prisons and places of detention during that dispute — in particular, the Governors and their support staff and the members of the Garda Síochána and Army. I also want to place again on record the Minister's appreciation of the efforts of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in seeking a resolution to the dispute.
Probably the most significant feature in the operation of the prisons and places of detention in recent years has been the unrelenting pressure on accommodation. Despite that pressure, however, every effort has been made to preserve — and, where possible, improve — the quality of the regimes operating at the institutions.
The House will appreciate that the actual physical quality of accommodation at the institutions is only one — albeit a very important one — of the factors which determine the nature of the overall regimes in the institutions. Other factors also have an important role to play. In this context I would refer, for example, to the provisions made for education and work training programmes in the prisons and places of detention. There are now 103 teachers — equivalent to 97 full time teachers — providing tuition to offenders. The teachers are provided mainly by vocational education committees. Basic courses in numeracy and literacy and general school subjects are given priority but social education, art, physical education, languages, woodwork, drama and music are also taught. A number of offenders are pursuing degree courses with the Open University.
The work training programmes provide industrial training and occupational activity designed to prepare offenders for employment. A variety of workshop and agricultural activities are also available, which cater for a wide range of aptitudes and interests among offenders. The importance of work training in the prisons is borne out by the fact that such programmes have been grant-aided from the European Social Fund in recent years and it is hoped that financial assistance will again be available this year.