(Cavan): I welcome this Supplementary Estimate in so far as it provides money to bring the salaries of gardaí up to a reasonable level and provide them with long-overdue payments for overtime. Every time one gets an opportunity one should put on the record of this House the appreciation of the service given to this country and its citizens by the Garda Síochána over the last 50 years. I do not think I could put that on record more effectively than by quoting paragraph 1269 of the Conroy Report. That report was presented to the Government by a distinguished commission set up by the Government and the Minister for Justice to examine and report and make recommendations to the Minister on the remuneration and conditions of service of the Garda Síochána. Paragraph 1269 states:
However, despite organisational shortcomings, we were left with the abiding impression of the Garda Síochána as a force whose members were men and women of integrity, dedicated to a job of increasing difficulty and complexity, a job that is frequently thankless. Since its foundation as an unarmed force in 1922, the Garda Síochána has served the country well. We believe that if our recommendations are implemented and if the matters to which we have drawn attention are put right, it can serve the country better.
As I have said, I do not think I could record my appreciation in better terms or more adequately than the Conroy Commission did in that paragraph. I wish on behalf of myself and my party to endorse every word of that paragraph.
It will be remembered that the Conroy Commission was set up to report and make recommendations to the Minister on the remuneration and conditions of service and the general terms of reference were confined accordingly. In a paragraph headed "Concluding Comment" on page 214 of the report the commission stated:
At the outset of this report we said we were satisfied that there is serious and long-standing discontent in the Garda Síochána.
We have dealt with the principal matters raised by, or on behalf of, the members of the force and which were suggested by them to be the root causes of the discontent. We believe that the recommendations we have made will, if accepted, go a long way towards removing the causes of the discontent.
I am glad the Government have accepted the Conroy Commission Report in principle. It has been intimated that is is proposed to implement it. The commission went on to say that pay and conditions were only part of the problem and only part of the cause of discontent.
It is also stated at paragraph 1265 that they were satisfied from the evidence that pay and conditions were only part of the problem.
The objective is an effective police force with high morale, fully accepted by and integrated with the community it serves. This objective will certainly not be fully attained merely by paying the force fairly and by looking after their physical conditions of employment.
At paragraph 1266 they say:
We would be failing in our duty to the Minister if we did not strongly urge that an examination be carried out by appropriately qualified people into the role, organisation and personnel policy of the force and, in particular, its relationship with the Department of Justice.
In the concluding paragraph on that page it would appear that the commission are satisfied that there is some sort of unhappy relationship between the Garda Síochána and the Minister's Department and that this relationship has existed for some years. If this is well founded it is rather disturbing. I am satisfied the Conroy Commission would not have gone outside their terms of reference, as they did in fact do, to draw the attention of the Minister to this if it were not well founded. I gather from what the report says that the relationship was unhappy and there was an unclear definition of role as between the Department of Justice and the Garda Síochána. There was a vagueness causing uncertainty and ineffectiveness about the relationship between the Department and the Commissioner, according to the report. The report alleges a lack of delegation from the Department to the force and this lack permeated the force, particularly in relation to financial resources. It goes on to suggest that there was no comprehensive planning based on research, that there was no personnel policy and the commission found it particularly disturbing that in a force the size of the Garda Síochána there was no one with specific responsibility for developing an on-going personnel policy, including training and retraining. The net result of all that has been to develop between the Department and the Garda Síochána a "them" and "us" atmosphere.
I am sure that Judge Conroy and the other learned members of the commission did not say that lightly or without evidence. The Garda Síochána should have a certain amount of independence. There should be a well-defined policy and, as long as the force is carrying out its duties, there should be no interference from the Department of Justice; there should certainly be no day-to-day interference in the functions of the force. The Commissioner is invariably a man of long standing, a man who has come to the top because of the way in which he discharged his duties, because of his integrity, his discipline and his knowledge of men and people. There should be a considerable amount of delegation from the Department to the Commissioner.
The Garda Síochána are sometimes frustrated a great deal by not knowing what Government policy is in certain fields. For example, last year we had a very undesirable development within the Government and that occurred, in my opinion, because certain Ministers did not know what the Taoiseach's policy was or what the Government's policy was. The Minister raises his eyes. I shall relate this to the position that I think could develop in the Garda Síochána if the members of that force do not know from day to day what Government policy is in certain matters.
A couple of years ago outside Leinster House people were arrested and taken away in Black Marias because they were picketing and protesting outside Leinster House. Recently we have had demonstrations and protests which appeared to be perfectly legal. I suppose all the Garda Síochána can do is mark time; they do not know whether they are to permit these demonstrations and protests, give them their blessing, stand idly by, or arrest the protesters and take them away.
Furthermore, in the sphere of illegal organisations, it is only fair to the organisations as well as to the country that they should know exactly where they stand with the Government and where the Government stand with them. I do not believe the Garda Síochána know where their duty lies in relation to illegal organisations. If they are aware of illegal activities all they do is report to headquarters and await instructions. This sort of thing leads to a wedge being driven between the Department and the force.
I would ask the Minister to read carefully again and again the concluding comment on page 214 of the Conroy Report and to see to it that the relationship between the Department and the force is improved and that the Department and the force know exactly where they stand with each other. There should be delegation from the Department to the Commissioner and the Commissioner should be encouraged to delegate to his officers. In that way we will have a more efficient force and better relations all round.
A matter which has come up here time and time again—the Minister referred to it in his opening speech—is the strength of the force. The question is whether the Garda Síochána is up to strength at the moment, whether it is adequate. This problem can be approached from two angles. It can be approached on the long term basis or on the present requirements of the force. I regret to have to say that, looked at on a long term basis, it is difficult to say what the required strength of the Garda will be in ten or 20 years time, although that is something we should know now, because when members are recruited the likelihood is that they will remain with the force for 30 years.
We might ask ourselves what sort of a police force do we expect to have in ten or 20 years time. Will it be responsible for traffic control, for traffic regulation and for the enforcement of the Road Traffic Acts as it is at present? Will it be responsible for such things as taking a census, enforcing the regulations under the licensing of dogs Acts and rendering many other services to the various Departments of State or will it be strictly a police force? It would appear from remarks made by the Minister for Local Government over the past few weeks that he has some idea of establishing a muinicipal police force which apparently would take over from the Garda the control of traffic and the enforcement of the Road Traffic Act regulations and that sort of thing. Is there any co-operation or liaison between the Department of Local Government and the Department of Justice about this? This might very well affect the requirements of the Garda in years to come.
There should be a planning section within the Garda which would devote its time to assessing the personnel requirements of the Garda not now but in five, ten, 15 or 20 years time in the changing conditions of our society. I recommend to the Minister that he should devote some thought to setting up such a planning and research unit within his Department which, as well as planning for modern methods of crime detection and prevention, would also plan for the future of the force. There is one thing about which there is no doubt and that is that at present the force is grossly understaffed and the public at large are getting a bad and inadequate service because and only because the force is understaffed.
There are a number of reasons why the force is understaffed. The Conroy Commission introduced the 42-hour week and provided for overtime for the Garda both of which provisions were long overdue. That, of course, reduced the number of police hours available. There is no doubt that crime of one sort or another has increased very considerably in recent years. I am told, for example, that 999 calls have increased fivefold within the past ten years. Each one of those calls makes a demand on the time of the Garda. None of those calls can be written off. Some of them may be only inquiries but they all have to be followed up. In this age we are living in, especially in the urban areas and particularly in the cities, there are marches and protests and demonstrations of one sort or another. They are all time-consuming and they take up a considerable amount of time of the Garda.
I was amazed today when I considered the amount of time of the Garda which is taken up in relation to motor vehicles. I did some research and I found that in 1950 there were 138,134 motor vehicles registered in this State. On 30th September, 1970, 20 years later, the figure of registered motor vehicles of one sort or another in the State had jumped to 558,403, an enormous jump. I then referred to some valuable information given in the Conroy Report and I found that in 1948 the Garda force consisted of 7,370 all ranks; in 1952 the figure was 6,785, and in 1968, which was the last year for which I could get the figure, it had dropped, instead of having increased, to 6,530. Therefore, in the past 20 years the motor population of this State jumped from over 100,000 to nearly 600,000 and in the same period the figure for the Garda force decreased although the amount of work imposed on the Garda in relation to motor vehicles must be enormous.
Bear in mind that not only is the time of the Garda taken up by road traffic offences, as indeed a lot of it is, but the activities of criminals have become more complex in this mechanical age. Motor vehicles are now used as getaway vehicles. A vehicle is stolen, a robbery takes place, the stolen vehicle is abandoned, another vehicle is stolen; and so on. That adds enormously to the complexity of criminal activities and to the difficulties in detecting crime and in arresting criminals. Furthermore we now have a state of affairs where motor vehicles are being stolen by the score in this city and elsewhere. It is not safe to leave cars parked for any length of time. As a result of the Garda being understaffed and below strength and not able to deal with this kind of thing effectively, we have reached the stage where one of the national newspapers, the Irish Independent, has had to provide a service for recovering motor vehicles. The system is that the person who loses the vehicle communicates with the Irish Independent. They publish the numbers and in that way a great number of cars are recovered. That is something that the newspaper concerned is to be complimented on, but it does emphasise the necessity for a strengthening of the Garda Síochána. I said that the force is grossly under strength. The figures I have given prove that conclusively. As spokesman on Justice, I have got letters from citizens of this city complaining that elderly people are in terror of being assaulted and having their handbags snatched from them and their houses broken into because of a lack of patrols. The system at the moment is that there are three eight-hour patrols in Dublin. There are vast areas like Ballyfermot—and I am not picking out Ballyfermot for any reason other than it is a huge built-up area with a large population of young people— where because of the lack of men there are times when during a particular eight-hour period, no members of the force are on patrol. There is no better way of preventing crime, whether serious or trivial, than having a garda on beat on foot. We all have experience of driving cars and seeing the Garda uniform. This makes one alert. One starts thinking of the road traffic regulations and of observing them. One could drive through town after town without seeing a member of the Garda Síochána at present, because they are under strength. The Minister should prevail on the Government to increase the strength of the force. He has told us that the numbers are to be increased by 400 men over the next two years. The Minister must know that that number is not sufficient. I do not blame the Minister personally for this. I am sure that the Minister applied for a much bigger increase in the numbers. The 400 men who are being provided probably represent all that the Department of Finance would permit as an increase rather than the minimum necessary to do the job. That view should not continue to exist. Even with the closing down of Garda stations throughout the country it is impossible to make the case that we are able to do with a smaller force now than we had 20 years ago.
I would like to deal with the closing down of the Garda stations. I will not make the case that every isolated Garda station in the country should be kept open, or where there is a large town with a substantial station that a Garda barracks four or five miles away should be retained. It would be unrealistic to do so provided there are sufficient patrol cars and motor-cycle patrols. Some barracks which have been allowed to remain open are closed most of the day and one finds a notice on the door indicating that the sergeant is somewhere else. A stranger coming into the town and seeing that notice may find that he is directed to a street he never heard of. This is due to the fact that the force is under strength. Reasonable facilities should be provided for the public by a continuous Garda service. It should be possible for a person in search of a garda to go to the post office where someone would be able to put him into telephonic communication with the garda's house after the station is closed.
Money is provided for post office services. It would be a good thing if the telephone numbers of the Garda stations were uniform throughout the country. In most cases the ESB in country towns have had the telephone number 500. I know that the ESB phone number was 500 in my own town when there were only 100 telephones there altogether. It would be a good thing if one could lift a telephone in any town and dial a known number which was general to Garda stations and be connected with the local Garda station. Everyone knows that the number 999 should be dialled in an emergency.
I would like to see something being done about recruitment. I stand over every word of the concluding paragraph of the Conroy Report which states that the Garda force are a fine body of men and have great integrity. As years go on and as the task of the Garda becomes more difficult, more attention will have to be paid to them on recruitment. The duties of the Garda are among the most difficult that could be imagined. A garda's life requires something in the nature of a vocation. A garda meets people at their worst. He meets them when they are breaking the law. He meets the criminal type, the person with mental illness and the drunken type. He meets the excited type of person and the angry person and he also has to deal with people who are suffering under great stress for one reason or another. He needs to be a man of great character and a person temperamentally suited to deal with the different types of people and the many situations which will envelop him. There are women in the force and they also must be temperamentally suited to the job. It must be in that situation a source of amazement to discover that there is no aptitude test for recruits for the force. The person who wants to become a member of the Garda Síochána must satisfy the Civil Service Commission and the Garda authorities that he is a person of integrity, that he satisfies certain standards in regard to physique and that he has certain educational standards; he must also pass a medical examination, but there is no aptitude test to ascertain if he is temperamentally or otherwise suited for the job. I may be told that he is interviewed by the sergeant and by the superintendent and eventually by the commissioner, but that is not the sort of test we should have. Paragraph 687 of the Conroy Report recommends that each candidate who qualifies in the written examination should, before acceptance, undergo an aptitude test administered by a qualified psychologist at an early stage in the recruitment procedure. That is not an extravagant requirement. One trained psychologist would be sufficient to deal with that requirement and it would prevent the occasional square peg from finding its way into the round hole.
Even one member who is temperamentally unsuited can make things difficult not alone for his colleagues in the force but for the general public and, therefore, I hope that the Minister has considered this recommendation. Indeed, we are living in the days of career guidance and we have trained people to give guidance on careers and this test is not unique because in the religious orders, for example, before students are taken in they have to undergo tests. It is an excellent idea and I strongly recommend it to the Minister.
Technically speaking the force is badly equipped and badly trained. We should have this research and planning unit, about which I have been speaking, and which we have not got. Compared with cities on the Continent and throughout the world we are very far behind in this regard. I am told that in London or in Glasgow they can say how long it would take a policeman to go, either on foot or in a motor vehicle, from one point to another at any time of the day or night. They have researched all this type of thing which is very badly needed here. We are providing money for the post office services and that reminds me that the central radio equipment and the central telephone equipment which the Garda Síochána use is very much out of date. I am told that the ESB have a much more up-to-date and more effective radio and telephone system than the Garda Síochána have. That should not be. I am also told that certain parts of the country are blacked out as far as the headquarters central radio and telephone system is concerned. Indeed, some vehicles used in illegal activities, robberies and raids, have been found abandoned in these "black" patches and whether that was merely accidental or whether it was planned by the criminals in the knowledge that they had a better chance of getting away in these areas than in others I do not know.
In regard to buildings, I had occasion some time ago to go into the Castle and I found that the conditions under which certain sections of the force, notably the fraud section, are operating are an absolute disgrace. I have referred already to the lack of understanding between the Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice. We find that the Garda Síochána are housed in buildings in Dublin Castle which were abandoned by the Civil Service and which are a public disgrace. The Civil Service were moved out because the buildings were not fit for them and the gardaí have been moved in. Pre-fabs are now being built and I suppose they will be an improvement but it is not good enough that gardaí should be operating under those conditions.
Another point which I should like to mention is in regard to the number of man-hours taken up by protecting banks all over the country. It may be that this protection is necessary but it is not good enough that it should be given to the banks at the expense of citizens in the community or to their detriment. Because of the lack of manpower resulting from this bank protection it is not now possible to establish proper road blocks where a car, for instance, has been stolen in Limerick, presumably for illegal activities. Formerly they used establish road checks as far away as Cork or on the Dublin side to try to locate such a car but that is not done now because it is not possible as the personnel are not there to do it. I do not know how this problem of bank protection can be dealt with. I do not know if it would be possible to station a few members of the Army in each of the larger towns and let them do bank protection work but it is something which the Minister should tackle and he should let us know his proposals in this regard, because it is a matter on which a lot of time has been wasted.
