I will hand over the Chair to Deputy Paul McGrath.
Deputy Paul McGrath took the Chair.
Estimates for Public Services 2003.
Vote 19 - Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Revised).
Vote 20 - Garda Síochána (Revised).
Vote 21 - Prisons (Revised).
Vote 22 - Courts Service (Revised).
Vote 23 - Land Registry and Registry of Deeds (Revised).
I welcome the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and his officials to the meeting, the purpose of which is to consider the Revised Estimates for 2003 for the justice group, Votes Nos. 19 to 23, inclusive. I invite the Minister to make his opening statement.
I welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee for its consideration of the Estimates for my Department's group of Votes. The Estimates for the five Votes covered by my Department amount to a total of €1.731 billion. Clearly, the justice, equality and law reform sector is a significant consumer of public expenditure and I want to ensure that the public services provided from this funding are appropriate, responsive and effective in meeting the needs and expectations of all members of the community.
I take this opportunity to share with the committee my perspective on the broader vision of justice and equality issues in my area and to inform Members about the work undertaken by my Department and the agencies and offices associated with it. It is just over a year since I took office as Minister of a Department that through its agencies and offices touches the lives of so many of our citizens. I am constantly reminded of the huge range of the Department's activities, ranging from supporting law enforcement, reforming the law, both civil and criminal, advancing opportunities for child care provision, promoting equality, tackling the scourge of criminality, battling alcohol and drug abuse, maintaining and developing sound immigration practices and procedures, fulfilling our responsibilities to asylum seekers, and deterring the rise of racist tendencies, among other matters.
In tackling this extensive portfolio, a determination and vision are required that will lead to measurable improvements in how my Department and the various agencies and offices associated with it contribute towards the development of an integrated, effective and measurable system of justice and equality. I want to highlight a number of topics here, but I am, of course, at the disposal of the committee should Members wish to raise other matters.
We all aspire to a society where respect for the individual and the property of others is held in high esteem. However, we all acknowledge that this does not always happen. The Garda Síochána is the defender of our hard-won liberties and my vision for it is of a police service that always acts to root out criminality by enforcing the law, respects the rights and the dignity of every individual and treats people fairly and impartially. I regard it as paramount that the Garda Síochána retains the trust of the community it serves. I acknowledge that this trust must be won and maintained by individual gardaí performing their duties to the highest standards.
For my part, I acknowledge that, as Minister, I must act to provide the support required by the Garda Síochána, in terms of resources, policies and legislation, to carry out its work effectively, so that it truly serves the people and provides a first-class policing service. That is why, as part of my extensive legislative programme, I have provided for a structured reform of the Garda Síochána, which will, on the one hand, set out a modern and transparent framework of management and accountability and, on the other, put in place inspection arrangements for the force designed to ensure the actions of the Garda Síochána are subject to full public accountability, especially given the nature of the powers it exercises on behalf of the community. The new agreed performance and accountability framework will give Garda managers more say in how resources are allocated and will provide for the setting of policing priorities and strategies for the future. It will also result in the Commissioner becoming the designated accounting officer for the Garda Vote and so directly accountable to Dáil Éireann for the use of resources. I intend bringing this legislation to Government in the next few weeks. I intend publishing the heads of legislation and bringing them to the attention of this committee and other interested parties as soon as I have Government approval fro the drafting process. I hope this major reform of the Garda Síochána, the first since 1925, will be completed by the end of this year if the Houses of the Oireachtas are in a position to afford me the time to get the measures through.
The objectives I have in undertaking this fundamental reform of the operating procedures of the Garda Síochána are to provide a framework by which we can introduce new systems of work in which the professionalism and effectiveness of the service given by members of the GardaSíochána can be enhanced and strengthened in the eyes of the public.
This process of change and modernisation is not confined to the Garda Síochána. In the Irish Prison Service, I have acknowledged the need to ensure that the significant resources which have been, and continue to be, invested in providing adequate facilities for those sentenced by the courts or held on remand are deployed so as to maximise efficiency. This means that the focus on delivering on what the people expect and demand from the Government, namely, an effective and efficient prison service, requires me to challenge one of the long-standing issues that has bedevilled the service for some time. The prison service has for many years been operating with an ever-growing dependence on overtime working. In the six years from 1997 to 2002, inclusive, overtime has risen from €36.6 million to €59.3 million - an increase of 62%. This dependence on overtime is indefensible and I have committed myself to bringing it to an end.
Negotiations are currently under way with the Prison Officers Association with a view to bringing an end to current overtime working arrangements and replacing them with the introduction of an annualised hours system of attendance. The system envisages staff contracting to work certain levels of additional hours, which will be paid for whether or not they are required to be worked. The proposal also involves the payment of lump sums to staff, subject to the delivery of specific commitments. I have set the negotiators on both sides a challenging timescale of 90 days to reach agreement on the detail, a timescale which is tight but necessary. By the beginning of September, I have to be in a position to implement new arrangements. I will have no choice in the matter because the money required to maintain the status quo will simply not be there. I firmly believe that the status quo is neither defensible, nor in the best interests of good governance of the prison service.
That is why I have embarked upon a comprehensive legislative programme, which will be delivered over the lifetime of this Government and which affects many areas of the justice, equality and law reform portfolio. Already three measures have been enacted - the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, the Data Protection (Amendment) Act and the Domestic Violence (Amendment) Act. Some days ago, the Criminal Justice (Illicit Traffic by Sea) Bill was passed by both Houses, to bring that figure to four. By the time the Houses rise for the summer recess, I expect that a further four Bills - the Criminal Justice (Illicit Traffic by Sea) Bill, Criminal Justice (Police Co-operation) Bill, Immigration Bill and European Convention on Human Rights Bill - will have been enacted. Members will appreciate, however, that by its very nature, the justice, equality and law reform portfolio is one where there are no instant solutions. Proposals must be robust, well thought out and draw, where appropriate, on expert advice. These are the considerations I have taken into account in formulating my legislative agenda. They are achieving results.
In addition to the enacted legislation and the Bills referred to above, I also have a further seven separate Bills before the Dáil or Seanad and I have another 34 either approaching the publication stage, or at lesser stages in the drafting process. I believe I have set an exacting agenda for action to be completed in the remaining period of this Dáil.
I have already addressed the joint committee earlier this week on the legislative measures I am taking in relation to abuse of alcohol, and I do not intend to revisit that ground now. However, other measures deserve comment. The Immigration Bill is awaiting consideration before this committee and it contains a number of important enhancements to our immigration law and the law in regard to asylum seekers. Its provisions build on the solid achievements of the previous Government in the areas of Irish immigration and asylum policy. The Government is committed to the ongoing development of immigration policy within the balanced and realistic co-ordinates set down in our programme for Government, in the interests of Irish society in all its diversity, and with fairness to all who seek to come to Ireland to share in and contribute to that society. It is a fact that immigration issues are now to the forefront of public policy-making and it is something that would have been unthinkable seven or eight years ago. This is in many ways a welcome and necessary consequence of the economic and social successes of the State in the last decade. We have turned around from being a country traditionally of outward migration to one where people are keen to come to share in, and of course contribute to, our prosperity.
It is also a fact that, with the increase in regular immigration, we have experienced what many other developed countries of the western world had already undergone in the previous decade or so. I refer to a growth in illegal immigration and in the international business of facilitating those who for one reason or another feel that they cannot, or are otherwise disinclined to, avail of the regular means provided by law for entering and settling in their chosen countries of destination. These people-smugglers, who are in business for the profits they can garner and whose interest in the lives of their clients goes no further than the extent to which they can pay, run operations that can often be highly sophisticated, with advanced document-forging skills and the ability to switch from one method or route to another as immigration authorities succeed in blocking off loopholes. One feature common to illegal people-smuggling throughout the world is the universal abuse of asylum processes as a means of securing a toehold in the country of destination. Ireland is no exception when it comes to this abuse.
I want to restate also the well-established Government policy in the matter of asylum, a policy to which the Government and I as Minister are unshakeably committed. The aim of our policy is to ensure that people arriving in the State who are genuinely in need of the protection of the State are identified as such as soon as possible after they arrive, in order that they can immediately start the process of integration into Irish society and take up the rights to which they are entitled under the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees and its amending protocol of 1967.
Later this year I will publish a Criminal Justice (Garda Powers) Bill. An important role of any Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is to keep the criminal law under constant review to ensure that the Garda has the legislative support to allow it to effectively investigate crime and bring to justice its perpetrators. The Bill will provide for longer powers of detention in Garda custody, the strengthening of Garda powers in relation to the preservation of the scene of a crime, the introduction of new powers in relation to the issuing of search warrants in certain circumstances and the strengthening of the law in relation to DNA sampling.
Early in 2004, I will publish a defamation Bill. This Bill will amend the law of defamation and give effect to a commitment in An Agreed Programme for Government to build on the work already undertaken by the Law Reform Commission, the Commission on the Newspaper Industry and more recently, the work of the legal advisory group on defamation. My purpose is to have a modern responsive code covering defamation that will, while respecting the privacy rights of individuals, introduce necessary reforms consistent with best international practice.
An Agreed Programme for Government contains a commitment that all substantive criminal law will be codified into a single crimes Act. An expert group is continuing to advise on the scope of the proposed codification. This is an important first step in activating what will be a major undertaking in criminal law reform. The aim is to bring together in one piece of legislation all the substantive criminal law of the State. While substantial work has already been done by way of consolidation in recent legislation, for example, the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001, much more remains to be done. The challenge facing the group is to devise an approach to codification which would bring greater clarity and consistency to criminal law but which, at the same time, is sufficiently adaptable to facilitate ongoing amendment necessary to keep abreast of criminological advancement, both domestically and on a European basis.
I have also embarked on the challenging task of a comprehensive codification of the liquor licensing code. I expect to be in a position to bring forward this important legislation next year. I want to make it clear that this Government in the area of criminal justice has one over-riding and fundamental strategy. The Garda will be given the resources to investigate crime, the courts the resources to deal effectively with criminal cases and there will be sufficient prison places to ensure that those convicted of crime will serve the sentences imposed on them by the courts. That simple strategy is complemented by a range of actions to deal with the myriad complexities of the crime situation, but it is important that one clear message always goes out, that there will be no hiding place for those who seek to inflict misery on the community through criminal activities.
The prison door no longer revolves, the programme of increased resourcing and modernising of the Courts Service is ongoing and all this is backed up by effective legislation. The Government has already increased Garda strength to record levels. We are on target to increasing the force to an all time high of 12,200 - its current authorised maximum strength - in 2004. The Government remains committed to achieving its target strength of 14,000 members by 2007. Although the increased rate of recruitment required to bring the size of the force from 12,200 to 14,000 over the remainder of the Government's term of office will be a challenge, it is my intention to bring appropriate proposals to the Government in due course. I hope the budgetary situation will be able to sustain delivery of the Government's commitment.
Members of the committee will welcome the provisional headline crime figures for the first quarter of 2003, which showed a decrease of 9% on the same quarter last year. Those figures followed a very worrying increase in crime, as demonstrated in the Garda Commissioner's annual reports for 2001 and 2002. I considered it important to ensure timely access to such information as an important contribution to public debate and formulation of policy on crime.
The figures suggest that there is not an inevitable upward spiral as far as crime is concerned. When considering crime figures, some basic realities must be borne in mind. We live in a society with a growing population, so that crime per head of population should be taken into account when considering raw statistics. The demographic structure of the population is such that a bulge is going through the classical age cohort for criminal behaviour, particularly among young males in the 15 to 30 year age group. I mention these aspects not by way of excuse but to point out that when considering crime, we must take account of countervailing factors, such as criminology and trends in society, the size of the population, increasing urbanisation and the fact that demographic profile is loaded in terms of the crime orientated age groups.
I must stress that the crime figures for the first quarter are not to be taken as necessarily indicative of how things will pan out in the long-term. One swallow does not make a summer. The only consolation I draw from the figures at this stage is that there is no inevitability of an upward swing in crime and that it is not true to say that crime is spiralling out of control and there is no hope that the crime figures will fall.
The figures indicate that there were 350 fewer cases of sexual assault, 592 fewer cases of assault causing harm - which is serious assault - 212 fewer cases of possession of drugs and 429 fewer cases of burglary. I do not wish to draw too many conclusions from the figures for one quarter, but the rise in the figures for other categories, such as theft from the person, indicates there is no room for complacency. However, the figures demonstrate that a strategic and targeted use of Garda resources achieves results and also they indicate that the Government's policy is working. It is worth repeating that my priority as Minister is to ensure that the Garda Síochána has the resources to investigate crime, the courts the resources to deal effectively with criminal cases and the prison services are sufficient to ensure that those convicted of crime will serve the sentences imposed on them.
Turning to the Estimates, provision across the justice group of Votes is increased from €1.583 billion in 2002 to €1.731 billion in 2003, an increase of 9.4% and the sixth successive year in which the allocation to the Department's Votes has increased. In broad terms, the division in the Votes group is approximately 74.2% for pay, salary and services associated with the day to day running of the Garda, the Prison Service, the Courts Service and so on, while 25.8% is for Government programmes, such as child care, legal aid, anti-crime measures, etc. Three quarters of the expenditure is allocated to pay while one quarter is allocated to programme expenditure.
The Justice sector is a very significant employer. The total number of people working in the 25 agencies and bodies who are paid for out of the Vote is just under 22,000. While bodies such as the Garda Síochána, the Prison Service and the Courts Service account for the bulk of that employment, other areas, such as immigration, have experienced unprecedented growth in recent years. To put it in context, in 1996, 22 civil servants were involved in immigration related work in my Department, whereas this year the number is over 600.
Sometimes when people see the dilapidated state of the Department's central office on St. Stephen's Green and the less than salubrious circumstances in which all in the building must work, including the Minister, it is nice to think that many services, such as the Burgh Quay service and the staff of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, work in far better accommodation. That is not always the situation in other Departments. I hope somebody will give me some money to make my office a little more habitable. It is an exercise in humility for me to work in my present office.
The requirement to tackle the public finances and exercise prudence with regard to public spending has had the inevitable effect on justice, equality and law reform areas. Within the overall allocation, there are challenges to be met by managers in my Department, the Garda Síochána, the Prison Service, the Courts Service and other areas funded by the public purse. It will mean that certain economies will be required, efficiencies introduced and priorities identified. I have no difficulty with that scenario.
I am confident that within the allocated increases achieved, the Government's commitment to funding all the major elements of the criminal justice system, the equality programme or asylum and immigration services can continue to operate effectively. However, I will not countenance runaway or uncontrolled public expenditure with its attendant implications for the health of the economy. Since the beginning of January, in line with Government policy, I have put in place new and unprecedented management procedures for the monitoring and control of expenditure across my Department, its agencies and bodies. These procedures are intensive, ongoing and involve all the top management figures in the sector. To date, they are proving very successful in that the sector remains within budget and I intend that every effort will be made to maintain that situation for the remainder of the year.
Every area has been asked to implement and become cost conscious in everything it does. When resources were plentiful that would not have been the first priority, but now that there are limits to the growth and size of the public purse, it behoves everybody, from the Minister, through the Accounting Officer to every sector of the Vote, to ensure they get top value for the considerable resources they have been allocated.
I have set myself an ambitious and challenging programme of work during my tenure as Minister. The programme will not be achieved in this Dáil session or this year. It would be nonsensical for me to pretend that such an extensive programme of modernisation and reform could be achieved in the first of a five year programme. However, I am impatient to fulfil my plans and to see the Government's targets for the Justice sector realised. We are making steady, consistent progress and are well on target and on top of our agenda. I intend to move forward in building on that.
I read in the newspapers recently that the government in one city in Pakistan has introduced the death penalty for flying kites with steel wire on the basis that people were being injured, so I do not want to engage in undue kite flying here. However, I want to make clear that in addition to the published measures in An Agreed Programme for Government, I have proposals regarding many other measures with regard to law reform, such as the law relating to personal injuries, which will shortly be the subject of substantial change. I will stop at that point and ask members of the committee to make their contributions.
Thank you, Minister.
I welcome the Minister to the committee and I thank him for his concise presentation. I agree with the thrust of his remarks. His is an ambitious programme and the Minister will certainly be very active over the next couple of years to fulfil all of it. He referred to the Acts which have gone through and to several Bills which are in the pipeline. There are a further 36 new Bills to be drafted as well as other items to be dealt with, which means we will all be very busy over the next while. I like the direction described by the Minister in terms of accountability, fairness and the treatment of citizens with dignity by his Department and the Garda.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has a significant budget of €1.73 billion which has been increased by 9.4%. When we deduct the increase in salaries which has come with benchmarking, there is not that much to go around. Many sections will experience a decrease in their budgets whereas I would have liked to see them experience an increase, especially where only small amounts of money are involved. Perhaps we will examine the Votes one by one, and section by section. I will not dwell unduly on the fine print.
We will come to each of the subheads in turn. Perhaps the Deputy will make his general statement if it suits.
That is fine. The matters for which the Minister is particularly responsible and which concern Deputies in their dealings with the public are the Garda, the Prison Service and the various organisations in place to deal with immigration.
There is no provision for any increase in recruitment to the Garda in Vote 20. The training budget is well down and the numbers coming into Templemore will simply be maintained at current levels. Can the Minister indicate if there will be one extra garda on the beat in 2003 as part of the programme which is to be completed in 2005? The Garda overtime budget is massively reduced. In 2001, the overtime budget was €83.7 million, in 2002 it was €65 million, but this year it is down to €51 million.
There are constant newspaper reports of the inability of the Garda to carry out its work. Yesterday, gardaí refused to drive prisoners from prison to courts until outstanding expenses are paid for petrol and meal costs. Some gardaí are owed up to €600 a month. A Garda service cannot operate if it is in debt. It is too like something one sees in the dictatorships we read about where the police and security forces rebel when they have not been paid for a considerable period of time. Can the Minister assure the committee that gardaí are being fully paid at the proper time for the services they provide?
There has been a demoralisation of the police force due to the lack of overtime. Overtime in the Garda is different from overtime in the Prison Service. Extra gardaí are not being recruited while public order offences have increased at a dramatic rate over the last two years. We do not know if the welcome decline in offences over the last quarter will become a trend over the course of the year. Demands on the Garda are increasing constantly, but there are no more than 2,300 gardaí on duty at any given time. Nevertheless, the Minister is reducing the overtime budget and there is no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of extra gardaí. It is not a problem to reduce overtime if one increases the number of gardaí, which is the direction the Minister should take. What number of gardaí would the substantial overtime figure of €83.7 million in 2001 have paid for?
The Minister must come to grips with this matter more than anything else. He talks about providing the Garda with new powers of detention and so on, but the Garda has many powers - as we saw with the Intoxicating Liquor Act - which are not being enforced effectively. We can provide the Garda with all the powers in the world, but if there are not enough gardaí with good morale, we will not achieve the ends we desire. I would like the Minister to explain to the committee the way in which the approach to the Garda force will be tightened up and to assure us that we will not find ourselves in the same position at this time next year with a commitment, but no means to deliver on it.
I do not intend to get into too much detail with regard to the Prison Service. I agree with the Minister that overtime in the service is horrendous. Something must be done about this matter, which has been allowed to get out of hand over time. It is not the Minister's fault. Overtime in the service last year amounted to more than half the salaries of the prison officers. Prison officer salaries came to €104.697 million and overtime came to €59.36 million or 55% to 65%. I cannot imagine why that state of affairs would be allowed to exist under any circumstances. It is not as though we have a small prison officer force. We are unique among western countries in that we have a one to one ratio of staff to prisoners. In the mid-1960s when there was a much smaller prison population the ratio of prison officers to prisoners was three to one. One would have thought the increase in scale in terms of numbers would have made it possible to improve rather than worsen that ratio. I understand our prison system is in many ways more humane than that in other jurisdictions, but I cannot understand why there is more than one prison officer to each prisoner while overtime costs are half of the salaries of the prison staff. Clearly, this cannot continue and I would like to know how the Minister intends to deal with it. This Minister is not the first who sought to do so. How will he deal with it in a coherent fashion which will not result in massive disruption, industrial action and so forth? I am not sure the best way to go about it is the Minister telling the prison staff at their annual conference, prior to starting negotiations, that he has a deadline he will adhere to, come hell or high water, or announcing it to the media before telling the prison staff.
Does the Minister propose to do anything about the visiting committees? He has mentioned the legislation he intends to bring forward but there is no reference to the visiting committees. Members of the committees are travelling from all over the country to the prisons, bypassing other prisons en route. Somebody travelling from Cahirciveen in Kerry, for example, bypasses Limerick Prison on their way to Mountjoy. I have no doubt it is a nice trip but it puts an unnecessary charge on the State. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s proposals in that regard.
I listened to the Minister's remarks about the probation service. With regard to the reintegration of prisoners, there is no reference to any part of the report produced by the NESF or to the statutory parole board or the statutory prison service being translated into legislation. I would have expected these matters, given that they relate to sentence management, to be high on the Minister's agenda as legislation would be required for some of it. A pathetic amount is being spent on services for families of prisoners for travel, accommodation and employment. These factors are major reasons that people return to crime after their release.
Less than €2 million is spent on community service orders and there is no reference to the Law Reform Commission's proposals in relation to fines as an alternative to imprisonment. The Minister says he will provide adequate prison places but he is not telling us about the other side of the issue, how sentences and sanctions could be dealt with in an alternative fashion, how he will build up the Probation and Welfare Service and how he will provide alternatives to the courts that will keep people out of prison when they should not be there. Up to 80% of the people who go to prison are sent there by the District Court alone. The District Court is, by definition, a court of primary jurisdiction and deals with relatively minor offences. All these matters need to be addressed urgently.
The number of non-nationals coming to this country seeking asylum has become an increasingly important issue over the last few years. That imposes a burden on the State. The Minister is proposing a dramatic decrease in accommodation costs this year. Perhaps he will outline how he proposes to do that. I presume it is based on direct provision but I would like to hear more detail.
The figures show that there are substantial waiting lists for free legal aid, up to 13 months in certain instances, but no increase in funding is proposed. This is an area of vulnerable people which requires a substantial response. Will the Minister outline what he intends to do to ensure there is a better response?
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal is causing concern. Figures in the media show that €3 million was spent in the last two and a half years. There are significant earners in that arena. We need to know how the system works. A certain percentage of the original applications are granted and another percentage is granted on appeal. The appeals situation seems to be out of kilter with that which pertains to the original applications.
How are the cases on appeal allocated? How is it that some lawyers get substantially more cases to deal with while the figures show that two of the members have no cases? Is there a particular preference in the allocation? To assure people that the system is operating fairly across the board, the Minister should publish the cases that go to each member and the outcome in those cases. There should be accountability. Otherwise a belief could grow that certain people get cases because they have a particular attitude, something we do not want to creep into the system. Perhaps the Minister would consider that and let the committee know his thinking on the matter.
There appear to be reductions in funding for some vulnerable areas, such as the Irish Association for Victim Support. We have had many complaints in recent months from members of the association that they are not being treated fairly. They say the gardaí are just not bothering to contact them about many of the cases coming before the courts. There is a decrease in the provision for that area. Given the enormous increase in crime, particularly serious crime, over the last two years I would have expected the provision to go in the opposite direction.
The anti-racism awareness campaign receives, proportionately, one of the greatest decreases. The sum is reduced from €2.3 million to €950,000.
I have discussed the Minister's presentation in general and the areas which give rise to concern. There is much work to be done on the Minister's proposals and we have barely started it. However, I am worried that the cutbacks in this year's budget impinge strongly on the Garda Síochána. There is no extra funding for further recruitment and there is a reduction in subsistence so it will be difficult to maintain the level of activity that is necessary. I am also concerned that in areas concerned with interfacing with vulnerable people, whether that is through free legal aid, immigration procedures or victim support, there are more decreases. In many cases the amounts of money allocated to those areas are relatively small in terms of the overall budget and they should not have suffered a decrease. Finally, I am concerned about how the Minister will deal with overtime for prison officers and resolve the problem effectively.
I shall be brief in welcoming the Minister and his staff. Deputy Costello has touched on some of the areas I wish to highlight in reviewing these Estimates. These include the probation service. Members of the probation service were with us earlier in the year and stressed very much the need for greater funding.
Another area I am personally familiar with is legal aid centres. There is definitely a need for a greater input of funding there. In my constituency, the town of Nenagh serves the entire area of Tipperary, incorporating two local authority jurisdictions and the population of Clonmel, which is practically 50 miles away. The Nenagh office is grossly understaffed. I am sure there are other offices similar to ours, but we must have the biggest waiting list in the country. I ask the Minister to look at these areas. I understand that while he allocates funding with our approval, it is possible that other people make decisions regarding the allocation of staff, but I emphasise the need for more staff.
I wish to make a couple of points in relation to the prison services. I welcome the Minister and his staff. We are all very conscious of the fact that this is an extremely difficult Department to run. The expenditure total for the Department of €1.731 billion is a major sum of taxpayers' money and I understand the difficulties in relation to some of the services the Minister's Department provides. I would have a fairly good insight into many sections of the Minister's Department.
The Minister talked about deterring racist tendencies. Does he now accept that we have a problem of increasing racism? There is growing abuse of non-nationals which is often not reported. We hear of the odd case in the media but from what I am listening to on the ground and from talking to community groups and individuals, a massive amount of abuse is going on in our society as a whole and we seem to be turning a blind eye to it. Is the Minister aware of that?
On Wednesday night I was in Lansdowne Road at the Ireland versus Georgia match, where abuse was directed at one Georgian player just because he plays for Rangers. That kind of sectarian abuse was fairly noticeable. We have to ensure that these kinds of issues are not allowed to emerge in relation to justice and equality.
In relation to the prison service, I disagreed strongly with the Minister's handling of the issue earlier. He has a point about expenditure. I accept totally that there is a great deal of expenditure involved and that the Minister has to be accountable, but I did not like the way the Minister handled the case of the prison officers. I wonder at times whether he understands the extremely difficult position prison officers are in. If one talks to prison officers, many of them will say that the job is extremely difficult and dangerous at times. We have to take that on board also. The Minister must also listen to their representatives and engage in dialogue. I respect the point that we have to do something about spending and ensure there is no question of waste of public money in that service.
On the broader issue of crime, one of the weaknesses of the whole system is that we are very quick to respond when the crime is committed, and whether it is an assault outside a pub or somebody is shot, about 20 forensic experts arrive on the scene. However, I am more interested in preventing these incidents. Has the Minister strong views about addressing the needs of young people, particular dysfunctional young people at four, five or six years of age, whom we can try to help before they end up in the courts system and in Mountjoy?
People on the ground, particularly people working in the education or community care sectors, have seen cases of young people at a very young age who come from crisis families. Many children come from poor families and are very well behaved because they have a solid support system within the family. Even though they might be living in a very disadvantaged community they still turn out to be very balanced, normal kids. We sometimes take our eye off the ball, and we should carry out serious studies on how children like that can come through the system against the odds.
Dysfunctional children are a major issue and there seems to be a silence in relation to it. These dysfunctional children do not necessarily come from disadvantaged areas. They can be found across society and in middle-class families also, as we know from some of the cases of violent attacks and abuse. We have to do something about that and I ask the Minister whether he has a view on resolving these issues.
Another issue is unreported crime. Many people seem to be disillusioned with the police service and the justice system and do not bother reporting crimes.
That includes the Minister.
That is true but I do not want to personalise the issue. Many people actually go along with this and feel very marginalised. Unreported crime is the unspoken story in the whole debate about justice, and I ask the Minister for his views on this. It is totally unprofessional for any policeman or policewoman to contact journalists at any stage about particular individuals. That is not professional policing. I mentioned this to the Garda Commissioner recently and he agreed.
How much does it cost to keep a young person in prison compared to, say, sending that young person to primary school? I have heard figures of between €80,000 per year and €100,000 per year. Has the Minister an accurate figure? I wish to know how much we are spending on young offenders so that we can compare it to the cost of other services that might prevent them ever going to Mountjoy.
I understand the Minister has a very difficult portfolio and that there are many problems out there. However, we have to deal with the substance of these issues. I know it is early days but I think the new Garda Commissioner is not into PR or spin. The vibe I am getting from gardaí on the ground is that this guy wants to do his job and does not want the limelight or to hog the media. He wants to get out there and engage in policing. I ask the Minister for his view on this because too much is being spent within the policing service on image building.
There was a classic example recently when there was a sports day for children with disabilities on a Sunday afternoon. There seemed to be about 20 gardaí on duty that day when two or three would have done the job. On the other hand, when I look for a garda in Donnycarney or Marino for an elderly person that has been abused, I get phone calls telling me that they are delayed or cannot come to the scene of the crime yet. They arrive four hours later when the gang has fled. I do not accept that. It is very bad management within our policing service.
I accept that we have 12,000 gardaí. I would be critical of the Minister for not appointing 2,000 extra gardaí as we could do with 14,000. Nevertheless, with 12,000 gardaí we should be able to provide a service and we should be more creative with the management of our resources.
Before moving on to look at the Estimates individually, I shall add a few points to what has been said. In relation to the Garda numbers, there was an interesting article in the Irish Independent this week indicating that with the number of Garda retiring and the numbers that can be put through Templemore in any one year, it is impossible to reach the Government’s targets. The Minister implied in his speech that he will bring forward radical proposals. Can he tell us what he is intending? Will he increase the capacity of Templemore or has he something else in mind to bring the Garda numbers up to where he says they should be? Perhaps he will be able to tell us about those numbers.
Has the Minister considered the possibility of raising the age at which gardaí must retire? I have said this to the Minister before. I constantly see gardaí who are fit and doing a damn good job being forced to retire at 57. There is certainly at least three more years in them. Many of those gardaí who are retiring at 57 have a lot of experience, wisdom and knowledge of the law to help out younger gardaí coming out of Templemore. That experience could be crucial in the handling of PR exercises and contexts where the experienced head has much to offer. Perhaps the minister would comment on that.
The Minister is fighting a losing battle on the point about crime figures and increases relative to population changes and demographic trends and so on. If he says to the the people that the crime rate is up but that if they look at the numbers especially in the 15-30 age group——
I agree, it is a non-runner.
It is a non-runner and the Ministers statistics are wrong because the bulge from the 15-30 age group has gone through the leaving certificate and now 19-30 is the big bulge. Numbers are falling in the second level schools and among leaving certificate candidates, of whom there are now 60,000 whereas there used to be 65,000.
The increase in the Department budget is 9.4%. Deputy Costello asked you to what extent that will be used in wage increases. You emphasised the total number of staff within the Department. If one does a quick sum on the number of staff and the amount being spent on salaries, you are paying an average of €60,000 in annual income to each member of the staff. When you subtract the numbers on the lower end of the salary scale from that, do you have many people on the higher end who can earn large salaries and, if so, what categories are there apart from lawyers?
The Chairman is counting pensions as well.
The Ministers's figure said 75% of the budget was wages, yet he has 22,000 staff. Maybe he could respond on that. I support him on his final point about his headquarters and the offices, including his own, being poor. There should be a decent office, as there should be decent services in Leinster House, but in that context let us not forget the Garda stations. Some of the stations around the country are neglected and something must be done about that. While the Office of Public Works is in charge of this the Minister could give it the lead. He could take a radical approach to Garda stations, particularly the rural ones, because many are strategically placed within villages and are run-down, dilapidated buildings. A local contractor or local groups could express an interest in what is happening to them.
In one case the Garda station had an acre of land attached and a couple of builders were keen to build a custom-made Garda station to the Minister's requirement on the site. That would give him a new Garda station for nothing probably, plus a few euro. He could do that fairly quickly across the country. Not only would he be improving the facilities for the gardaí but he would be showing the communities that he is interested and that he sees a real role for the Garda stations. Perhaps he could make it a priority to talk to Office of Public Works and see what can be done on that front. Great strides could be made on this.
We could spend half an hour on each of the points you raised, so I will just go through a couple of them. On Garda retirement, I told the Garda Representative Association conference that I am minded to sit down with them to agree a basis for increasing the retirement age from 57 to 60. If we can agree a basis on which to do this I will bring those proposals to Government. I have informed the Government that I am working towards that. I am not trying to delay the issue but I do not want to create a false expectation on the part of anybody who is retiring this week or next that something is going to happen instantly. I must have agreement with the representative associations on the basis for any change in that area before I can bring it to Government.
The second point was on Garda stations. There is a Garda buildings review committee and the points you make are being pressed upon me from all sides. The example you have in mind is very similar to one of another town in the west which has a two acre site attached and the creative thinking that you propose is the way forward. Deputy Parlon, the Minister of State in the Office of Public Works, and I have discussed the opportunities that exist to review the Garda estate with that in mind. It will not improve my offices in St. Stephen's Green.
It is true to say that the budget for the Garda Síochána in terms of wages and so on looks static this year compared with last year, but there is enough money to recruit extra gardaí and we are engaging in a recruitment programme which will bring the number up. We are on course to bring the strength of the force up to 12,200 in 2004. I saw the article, to which you, Chairman, also referred, in the Irish Independent by Tom Brady where he makes the point about the rate of Garda retirements, which is entirely outside my control. I cannot wave a magic wand and stop it.
If the 57 age limit changes that will change.
That might change it significantly, although some people argue that would be only a temporary advantage but I do not agree. If the 57 age limit does go up to 60 there are many gardaí who have done their 30 years service and are entitled to a pension who will decide in their early fifties to stay with the job, whereas the ticking of the clock when they are 52 or 53 and they see retirement looming at 57 applies some psychological pressure on them to face up to getting another task.
There is another factor, namely, that if somebody retires before the age of 55 and goes into other employment he or she can accumulate enough credits and payments for a social welfare pension. Many gardaí who retire at that age are conscious of that. If the possibility was there to go to 60 it would change many of those minds.
I agree that is one of the factors which I have to look at to see how I can change the approach to retirement. Deputy Costello raised the visiting committees. I have introduced a system whereby nobody is appointed for the first time to any prison visiting committee who is not from the county or an adjoining county. The Deputy will be sorry to hear that cross-country migrations are being phased out.
What about the Minister's Cabinet colleagues?
On the question of prison officers' overtime, I agree with Deputies Finian McGrath and Costello that there is a problem which has been building up for a long time. In case it is suggested that I am behaving brusquely by focusing people's minds on that issue now, I am not. The money is not there to carry on as we are this year. That is the first point. Second, a consultation process has been going on for the best part of seven years, the staffing and operations review team and strategic effectiveness programme process. It is not as if this has appeared from nowhere and that suddenly the Minister opened a door and said things must change. The building blocks of a new approach to manning our prison service have been in place for a long time.
The prison service, in its present arrangements, has become ever more reliant on, and addicted to, overtime. However, many officers, particularly the younger ones with family commitments, now find that overtime is not a huge advantage. They can see a life outside prison. As Deputy McGrath says, working long hours in the prison system takes its toll on prison officers in its own way. My guaranteed hours proposal is intended to give officers in the prison service every incentive to agree proposals with management which see them doing ever fewer of their guaranteed hours rather than being forced to earn more and more through the overtime system. I wish to change the culture and the ground rules of how the prison service is run so that the entire community of prison officers has a financial incentive to run it with a safe but not excessive number of personnel and that they have an incentive to spend more time out of prison with their families in their homes than at present. That is my approach.
I do not want to negotiate over the airwaves, but I would like to inform the committee that I am monitoring the negotiation process very carefully and am quite satisfied that both sides are engaging in detailed discussion of the implications of what management is now proposing. Members may have thought that setting a time limit looked somewhat dramatic in the circumstances. However, it was done because I knew that I faced a crisis in the autumn. It was also done to signal that the management had to become just as serious as the prison officers in concentrating on the issue and bringing the process to a timely conclusion.
As Deputy Costello has said, we have one of the highest manning ratios of prison officers to prisoners in western Europe, if not the highest. Having toured several prison facilities - I intend to see them all in my time as Minister - I am conscious of the fact that the present system is very heavily dependent on antiquated methods of prison supervision and that we could have a different system that would leave everybody better off. I am not trying to make people redundant but merely to take the dependence on overtime out of the equation and replace it with a system which is kinder to everyone involved.
Deputy Hoctor raised the question of legal aid centres. The figures suggest disparities in various parts of the country in waiting times for legal aid services. I have an elaborate chart on the differences, which I can give to the Deputy if she wishes. I was interested that the Deputy also zeroed in on something that had struck me: Nenagh is probably the hardest pressed of the legal centres and the delays are longest there. The Legal Aid Board is taking steps to deal with those disparities in outcomes. There are methods of relieving them, including transferring resources within the service and using private lawyers to supplement it and attack the overtime. Those delays are very demoralising for everyone involved, and no one likes to see them.
Deputy Finian McGrath referred to racism, and I fully agree with him on it. However, the Department has a very extensive anti-racism programme. The anti-racism awareness campaign is a three-year programme. When it comes to an end, we will re-evaluate all our expenditure on it to see what was good value for money. I agree with Deputy McGrath that there is a real need for the Government to stay on top of the issue and not be reactive, following along in the wake of events. I agree with him completely about the behaviour of fans at Lansdowne Road towards a Rangers player who has about as much to do with rivalry between Rangers and Celtic as the man in the moon. I was very sorry to see that, in addition to what happened - the unfortunate person was also ill at the time he was being subjected to the abuse. I agree with the Deputy that it is unfortunate to see that coming into Irish soccer, and I hope it is nipped in the bud.
On racism generally, I stress that, although there are reasons to worry, in general terms, compared with other western European countries, we are doing quite well. We have not had riots or major commotions. We do not have a hard right seeking votes and building anti-immigrant attitudes. We do not have many of those phenomena.
We have received correspondence from someone who wishes to address this committee on that subject.
That may be the case.
People tell me the Minister is spending too much money on this.
There are underlying attitudes based on urban myths and so on. If one examines what the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Social and Family Affairs are doing, one will see that they are constantly working against those myths. Many people on the street believe that asylum-seekers are given some special priority regarding accommodation and so on. That is not the case. For instance, some Deputies may consider harsh the changes that have been made to rent allowances, but it has now been made extremely clear to asylum-seekers that there is no inside track and that the direct provision that the Department of Justice makes available to them is all they can look forward to.
When it comes to expenditure on such programmes, we must secure good value for money and be sure, for example, that advertising hoardings are having some effect. Individual programmes must be effective. It is very easy to sign a cheque for something and wave it round at a committee such as this, saying that one is doing one's bit. The real question is whether one is having any effect.
Deputy Finian McGrath mentioned young people. There are diversion schemes and juvenile liaison schemes and so on run by the Garda Síochána, but dealing with children of the age about which the Deputy is talking requires a cross-departmental approach. While in some cases gardaí cannot help but identify problems, they cannot really intervene much with families in crisis to deal with five-year-olds who are already going off the rails. The work is not for the Garda but for the education system and social workers. While I agree that it is wrong to take refuge in departmental demarcations, I cannot really envisage major Government initiatives through the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, for I do not have the apparatus to intervene with five-year-olds and produce the desired outcomes.
We will now proceed to a general discussion of the Estimates. I suggest that we proceed through them in the same order as they appear on our documentation - that is, we will begin with subhead A. We will try to avoid jumping from one page to another. If we go through it systematically, we might finish quickly. We are only considering these Estimates and cannot propose that they be increased.
We will start with Vote 19, Justice, Equality and Law Reform, subhead A1, administrative budget, salaries, wages and allowances. Are there any questions regarding the subheads A1 to A10?
Perhaps I might make one or two brief points. Subhead A5 refers to "computer capital" and "computer other". I do not know what the latter is, but it is far in excess of computer capital. There has been a reduction from €6.5 million to €1.3 million. The overall budget for office machinery and others is down from €10.5 million to €2 million. That is a colossal reduction. Does that mean everything in the administrative area has been computerised and that all the office machinery is in place, bringing us up to date regarding modern technology?
There is a strange figure in A6. There is a dramatic drop of more than 50% in what would be required for basics such as heat, light and fuel. I would have thought inflation would ensure the price would at least stay the same. Will we find offices will not be heated over the winter and that lights will not be turned on? Finally, Nos. 9 and 10 show no outturn for 2002, yet the shared service centre costs €11.7 million.
Will the Minister comment on the forthcoming EU Presidency? A budget of €3 million is allocated to that.
Entertainment in the Minister's Department is up 40%. I know it is small money but across most other heads the entertainment budgets are down. Legal fees are up dramatically - 350%. Is the Minister employing additional lawyers? I suppose they can be hard to get.
Telecommunications and postal services are down 50%. Is the Minister going to stop writing to people? What is happening there? How is the Minister going to do this? Was it grossly overused before? The Minister is using consultants also, who account for an increase of 260%. Will he account for those?
The entertainment relates to the EU. I have not made plans for going on some kind of entertainment spree. Because of the upcoming Presidency we will have many functions, which explains the increase. I do not plan to increase entertainment in the Department this year.
Regarding legal fees, we are looking at the provisional outturn for last year and a provision made available for this year. That is the best estimate of what may land on our desks this year. It may well turn out that that is not spent but unfortunately those fees, €668,000, are not a vast amount for the Department's legal fees.
I will come back to the postal and telecommunications service as I have no explanation for our dramatic improvement. The costs of office equipment and supplies rose because we were fitting out a number of offices last year but we have now finished and do not anticipate fitting out any more this year.
Regarding computers, we have engaged in very extensive IT programmes for a number of years across several agencies and there is no proposal to maintain that rate of computerisation, as we have reached a plateau. There are some computer projects being put on hold because the capital is not there, but the figure here is bills for past projects we had to deal with.
The shared service centre is the finance and accounts branch in Killarney. It provides services across the departmental family. It is a new category, though it is not as if Killarney did not exist before, but this is a new heading. I have visited Killarney and it is working very effectively. It is a good example of decentralisation and is not affected by distance. It pays gardaí, prison officers and other staff in the courts and so on. The staff there are highly motivated and they work in very good conditions. It is not that we are spending €11 million that was not spent before but that this is a new way of accounting for that money.
On the EU Presidency, a number of issues are involved here. On pay, we had to recruit people to the Department and promote others on a temporary basis to take responsibility for some Presidency activities. To put it in context, the Justice and Home Affairs Council, of which I will be President from January 2004 to June 2004, does 40% of EU business. It is very busy and requires considerable servicing to keep it operational. In addition, there will be an informal meeting in Dublin and a lot of travel to and from Brussels.
The rotating Presidency is under discussion at the Convention and I do not want to say too much about it. However, considerable resources must be devoted to ensuring the EU Councils continue to function during the year. That €3 million is money we had to get from Government to make sure our Department could keep its end up.
I have a very small international section in the Department, one I would like to be a lot bigger. It is very difficult keeping abreast with international developments in justice.
I suppose we should congratulate Deputy Healy-Rae with another success in Killarney.
My predecessor would claim some credit for it if he were here.
I have now discovered what happened to the postal service. That has gone to the shared service centre. The Killarney Vote, A9, includes the Vote.
And the consultancy?
Those are bills we will have to pay this year for previous studies. There are no major consultancy initiatives at present, as the Department of Finance has clamped down on those.
Perhaps the Minister will give us a note at a later date on what those consultancies are.
How did we get the reduction in costs for office equipment?
Because we were fitting out premises in Burgh Quay and so on.
We will take other services briefly, B through U. Are there any questions on those?
Can the Minister give us a breakdown of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal and other commissions of inquiry at some point? Clearly there is a substantial allocation of funds, but is most of that going to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal or to the commissions of inquiry? It is good the Human Rights Commission is getting a substantial increase, so obviously it is closer to getting the staff it has sought.
The allocations for the Irish Association for Victim Support and Justice for the Forgotten have decreased. The asylum seeker task force is receiving considerable funding, €38 million this year, and a breakdown of that figure would be very interesting. The Minister mentioned the Asylum Support Service, and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, among other bodies. I would like to hear how the allocation of cases at the Refugee Appeals Tribunal goes, as that is a sensitive issue.
Perhaps the Minister will give us a briefing note later rather than spending too much time on it now.
I have already asked about asylum seeker accommodation, for which there is a substantial decrease. A briefing document would be useful in that regard.
We know of the good which the Criminal Assets Bureau has been doing. Will the Minister clarify whether the figures cover the legal fees as well as the salaries and wages of other staff? What legal fees are being paid to people working in this area?
Will the Minister elaborate on subhead D1, compensation for personal injuries criminally inflicted, and the figure of €3.5 million? I know gardaí get injured. Is there a special section in the Department dealing with this matter so that there is uniformity of approach across the country rather than an ad hoc approach at different levels? Some 250 gardaí are on sick leave or are on leave due to injury. That is a large number of gardaí not at work. I suggest a small section in the Department should deal with that. Perhaps it is a matter for the Garda Commissioner. If such a considerable number of gardaí are off work, the Minister should intervene and be on top of the matter. I believe six of those gardaí have claimed they are out of work because of bullying. That is a lot of manpower and represents about 4% of the total force.
This year there is a budget of €68 million for child care, while last year the budget was €58 million. In the past, allocations for child care were often not drawn down. What is the uptake of child care grants and so on?
I refer to subhead R, violence against women. There is also violence against men. An organisation which champions their cause, AMEN, is headed up by a women from Navan but it has great difficulty getting funding. Does the Minister intend allocating some of that budget to combating violence against men? Why should it be solely to combat violence against women?
On the last point, I have been asked on a number of occasions by that group to give it financial support and I have received queries as to why there is only one way traffic on the issue. The prevention of violence against women has a more traditional support base in public discourse and at European level. There are various initiatives in that regard. Violence against men is a less understood phenomenon but there is no doubt it happens. I will look at the question as to whether the resources to combat domestic violence could be more fairly allocated. There is, however, a limit to the amount of resources I can provide to voluntary groups of this kind.
In regard to the point about child care, €436 million has been committed to our child care programme over seven years. It had a slow start but the section of my Department which deals with it is tenacious in ensuring we get through our commitment under that programme and that we will expend that €436 million. It is heavily assisted by the European Union and, therefore, it does not make sense for the State not to get on with its commitment since we are being considerably helped by the EU in many of these expenditure programmes.
The equal opportunities child care programme is in place and it is designed to improve equality on two fronts - gender equality to help women and social equality to focus the bulk of it on disadvantage and on disadvantaged people. We are way behind other European states in the provision of child care, perhaps due to the fact that we have a much earlier school starting age. Children usually start school at four years of age in Ireland, while in some continental countries, children are six or seven years of age before they start school.
The equal opportunities child care programme decided not to expend resources on setting up expensive structures across the State, on an administration or on attempting to deal with the child care issue in a theoretical way. What we have been doing under that programme is supporting voluntary child care initiatives across the country with both training and capital grants. Monitoring is done through ADM Limited and the results are effective in terms of getting bang for our buck, to use the Americanism. In some cases, we provide up to €1 million for a child care facility in a disadvantaged area, while in other cases we simply provide training grants to people in private sector child care facilities where there is an inequality aspect to what they are doing.
The transformation which this programme is bringing about, especially in rural areas in terms of the availability of child care facilities, is remarkable. The situation is changing dramatically. I do not know whether it happens in the Chairm
an's constituency but frequently a bungalow or a house is bought in an estate and it is converted into a child care facility. It is not simply a case of people looking after three children in the back room of a house. The degree of investment going into this area is considerable.
Since the Minister is dealing with child care, I wish to make a suggestion. When an estate is being planned, we in County Westmeath suggested some years ago that one should identify the house which will become the child care facility and that the plans for that house should provide for a child care facility so that there are no planning difficulties at a later stage. It is a major bone of contention in new housing estates if somebody wishes to convert a house to a child care facility.
His neighbour would not be too keen on it.
They do not want it at all. Neighbours do not want cars and so on pulling up outside the house. Since the Minister is providing grant aid and funding, in conjunction with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, he might specify that in the building regulations.
I am not expert in this area but I understand developers must provide those facilities under most guidelines where there are 50 houses. What the Chairman and I have more experience of are people in existing estates doing ad hoc jobs.
On the question of the commissions and special inquiries, I am dealing with the tribunals such as the Barr tribunal on the Abbeylara incident and the Morris tribunal which is dealing with matters in County Donegal. Those are significant items. The Chairman will appreciate the cost of tribunals to Departments. Tribunals are expensive. Something I did not mention in my propaganda in the earlier part of the meeting is that the legislation for non-tribunal inquiries, or private inquiries, is at a very advanced stage. I hope to bring the legislation into the public domain within weeks. It will significantly reduce the cost of some inquiries to the State.
The Chairman asked about subhead D1. That vote is not for garda injuries. What the Chairman is talking about is a different matter which is dealt with under the Garda Síochána Compensation Acts. The Department has a limited function in that regard. Subhead D1 refers to injuries to ordinary Joe Soaps and Josephine Soaps as a result of criminal matters. The compensation scheme was introduced in the 1970s originally and it used to apply not simply to what are now called special damages, but also to general damages. If one's leg was broken in an assault, there was a compensation tribunal to deal with the matter.
The compensation body is very efficient and good.
It is very efficient. Some people have suffered horrific injuries in gratuitous assaults in Dublin. I was interested to note that one foreign person who suffered very substantial injuries had a vast sum of money paid from the fund in question for medical treatment and future nursing requirements. Sometimes people accuse us of being behind and miserly but Ireland is well in advance of other countries in this respect. I am being too long-winded.
I am conscious of the fact we have to finish by 11 a.m. so we will proceed to Vote 20, which concerns the Garda Síochána. We will consider subheads A1 to A10.
Subhead A1 concerns Garda recruitment. There seems to be no budget for recruitment. The increases that have come into play in terms of the new programme seem to concern salaries. The student garda allocation seems to be much the same as it was last year, taking inflationary increases into account. The overtime is reduced. Furthermore, the provision for home travel is substantially reduced, from €26 million to €17 million. I presume this figure includes subsistence. This links up with overtime. Can the Minister state if he is recruiting one single extra garda in 2003?
Under subhead A5, concerning the PULSE system, there is a massive increase regarding computers from €9 million to €21 million. The information I receive suggests the PULSE system is a disaster in terms of its operation and that it is very slow and takes up much Garda time. Does the massive increase involve the installation of a new system?
I am glad to see a proposed reduction in compensation paid under civil actions taken against members of the Garda from €13.8 million to €11.3. Does this mean the Minister is predicting a reduction? I hope this is the case.
Subhead K concerns appropriations in aid and receipts from banks in respect of cash escort services. Is it not possible to say to the banks that the Government will not contribute one cent of the cost in this regard on the basis that the banks have already indicated that they cannot pass on the reduction in the interest rate by the ECB? They will make an enormous profit from this. With regard to the €952,000, it should not be beyond the ability——
I think this item is being considered specifically by the Committee of Public Accounts.
It is part of our subhead.
Maybe we should await its report.
An Accounting Officer is engaged with the Committee of Public Accounts on this issue. To reassure Deputy Costello, since becoming Minister I have had informal discussions, by way of an intermediary, with the Irish Bankers' Federation and I am very satisfied that a much more realistic contribution will be made in the future compared to that of the past.
I do not believe there should be any contribution made considering the enormous profits that are made and the huge difficulty in getting the banks to reduce their interest rates when they get a beneficial reduction in the interest rate by the ECB. The Minister should use his well-reputed powers taking strong measures when appropriate and tell the banks where to get off.
I will certainly use the Deputy's suggestion and am grateful for his strong support.
In relation to subhead A1, concerning salaries, wages and allowances for the Garda Síochána, there is an increase of only 6%, which will not keep pace with the wage increases necessitated by benchmarking. There is no indication that there will be any increase in the number of gardaí. Will the Minister state how he will get the extra money?
We should consider the subhead concerning the maintenance and running expenses of vehicles and the purchasing of new vehicles. There is always a problem regarding the length of time it takes to replace crashed vehicles. There is a compensation system in this respect and no insurance. It is a Garda matter but there is a poor system for replacing damaged vehicles. In my town the Garda was without vehicles for two months and some of the gardaí had to use their own. That is unsatisfactory and it is ridiculous that there is not a more efficient system to replace them. Maybe the Minister would look at this, bearing in mind that the day-to-day running of the organisation is a matter for the Garda, not himself.
Two gardaí, one from my constituency, were killed in Cork last year. The Garda says that rally cars have a mechanism ensuring that a car does not disintegrate when it crashes. I am not a technical expert but I wonder if everything is in place in Garda cars to protect the gardaí, particularly if they have to drive at high speed. We all know the cars we drive are not capable of impact at high speed but those of the gardaí should be made to protect and save them. In the case in Cork, the gardaí concerned were definitely not in a suitable vehicle.
A number of issues arise in respect of that point. If Garda cars are vulnerable to destruction, obviously the Commissioner will recommend cars that are as safe as is reasonable in the circumstances. He also has to get value for money. I accept that the lives of gardaí have to be protected, but not every car can be armoured. In terms of the allocation of resources, we could not go too far down that road. However, the Commissioner keeps under review the kinds of cars he purchases and bears in mind their safety.
Garda pay, excluding overtime, amounts to €635.4 million, which is a 10.7% increase over the 2002 outturn. One has to separate, in this discussion, overtime and the other forms of payment. There is plenty of money in the allocation to recruit the gardaí I mentioned and to meet the required number. We are well down that road and therefore this is not the problem.
Bearing in mind the new system of which I have spoken, I have asked that everybody in the Garda Síochána, from the top down, look carefully at all allocations of overtime payments and at all the other forms of expenditure and resources in terms of value for money. I have had detailed discussions with the Commissioner on the kinds of measures necessary in this regard. One concerns static positions.
People are probably getting tired of listening to me saying it requires 5.2 gardaí to keep one garda in a wooden hut in any place. That is a frightening figure. If one garda is stationed outside somebody's home, or at a particular office, fixture or embassy, all those security arrangements are hugely absorbing of Garda resources. The Commissioner has readily agreed, having come to the Department a long time ago with his own proposal that there should be a real value for money approach to Garda presences which are symbolic rather than significant in terms of security.
In addition I am exploring actively with the Commissioner ways in which to give Garda powers to other categories of people. What I have in mind is limited powers to security staff in courts buildings to, say, arrest people on the direction of a judge, so that it is not necessary to have gardaí at all times at every court; second, limited powers to people in museums and other institutions of that kind to demand names and addresses and, if necessary, to detain those who are about to slash paintings or whatever people might do in a gallery or elsewhere. We have to think in terms of giving persons who carry out custodial or guardian functions some extra powers in order that gardaí do not have to be in attendance at all times in every museum.
What about escorting refugees who are being repatriated?
That is another example.
That is a huge waste of manpower.
In relation to that issue, at EU level at the Justice and Home Affairs Council there is a great willingness between member states to co-operate. I have mentioned particularly to the United Kingdom representative that on issues such as repatriation we could share costs and flights. That is an obvious area for change.
Deputy Costello raised the question of PULSE. The increased expenditure for this year is due to the fact that Release 2 of PULSE is being developed and will roll out in the third quarter of 2003. There have been problems with PULSE and it is being developed. It is the only system we have and fundamentally it is a good system. Such problems as there are with it will be ironed out as time goes by. It enables me - this may be an advantage or a disadvantage, sometimes I think it is a disadvantage - to give quarterly figures for crime, instead of waiting 18 months to two years as in the past.
Are there are queries relating to Vote 21 - Prisons? I note the entertainment allowance is down. Has entertainment in prisons ceased?
I note that assistance towards travel and subsistence for people, particularly with children, visiting members of their family in custody has been reduced. Are they required to apply to the Department for assistance and, if so, how many applied last year and how many were facilitated?
I will have to come back to the Deputy with that information.
Thank you. The amount of money appears very small.
I note there is an increase in Subhead D - Manufacturing Department and Farm. This subhead which provides for ongoing manufacture or farm activities in the prisons and places of detention has increased from €500,000 to over €1 million.
Part of the process in prisons is carrying out activities of a commercial kind, effectively work related activities and training activities for prisoners. As I understand it, this year a significant amount of work is being done by the prison service through this subhead in relation to the Special Olympics. It is a form of subsidy for the Special Olympics. Much of the material and equipment for flags——
The work is very good.
That is a good image to project and we should applaud it.
That appears to have covered that Vote.
Are there any queries in relation to the Courts Service?
In relation to capital expenditure in the Courts Service on courthouses and so on, we have managed to maintain a high outcome of €19 million, despite the fact that money is not as plentiful as it was. In addition, the Cork courthouse in Washington Street, Cork, one of the finest municipal buildings in Cork and probably one of the most prominent in Cork city, had its exterior repaired a number of years ago. On coming into office I was faced with a bill of approximately €25 million for its interior refurbishment. If I had authorised that bill it would have wiped out my entire capital budget. Luckily, the Courts Service and its excellent chief executive, P.J. Fitzpatrick, and Cork City Council, the owner of the premises, came to a creative approach which involved a lease of the premises over a number of years. As a result I am able to get on with a number of large, high value projects by being inventive in terms of how we finance the expenditure.
Does someone in the private sector carry out the renovations and lease it back to the Minister?
Many of the courthouses have been vested in the Courts Service but this one had not and Cork City Council still owns it. We are in the happy position now where Cork City Council will lease it to us at an enhanced grant which will cover the capital cost of the refurbishment.
What will be the total cost over the period?
It will be quite reduced. With financing charges I do not think it will be significantly higher than in any commercial arrangement. It is good value for money. In that case Cork City Council is borrowing the money from banks at good rates to finance it.
A programme was put in place a few years ago to reform the Land Registry and make it more efficient. From my own dealings with it, there has certainly been an improvement. What is the roll-out for the new scheme? I cannot recall what timescale was envisaged but there was to be a major improvement.
The position is that the service which includes both the Registry of Deeds and Land Registry is effectively being run by a shadow board which has not yet been put on a statutory independent basis. There were proposals in the legislative programme to put it on an independent statutory footing. If that were done I would have had to provide a large sum of money to fund the accrued pension liabilities. I have had to stall it at present because of insufficient funds. In the meantime a shadow board operates it in shadow form as though it were a semi-State entity.
I am aware from my dealings with Land Registry - Catherine Treacy is the Registrar - that it is doing a huge amount of modernisation work. It has made significant progress although there are still delays and always will be, I presume. There has also been dramatic progress in terms of computerisation. One thinks everything is easy, but different scales are required for computer based maps used in Ordnance Survey and the Land Registry and to marry the two systems caused a lot of bother.
I am satisfied with the service. Its ambitious plan is being implemented and the quality of service to solicitors is improving. I know some people have come up with cases where there have been delays - Deputy Ring is a specialist at this. However, the situation has dramatically improved compared to what it was.
Could the Minister use his influence on a cross-departmental issue that arises regularly with the Land Registry concerning land registration and dealings with the Land Commission? Administration work on farms and land that were divided in the past has never been completed. Many people are under the impression that this is bogged down in the Land Registry, although it may well be in the Land Commission. Could the Minister use his office to reach a working arrangement with the Land Commission to try to expedite what should have been done years ago?
I will raise that issue with the Land Registry and see if anything can be done, and with the Department of Agriculture and Food which now has responsibility for the remains of the Land Commission.
Yes. They should complete the dealings that have been put back. Some of them go back 20, 25 or 30 years and have still not been completed.
I thank the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, and his officials, for their attendance today.