I welcome students from the National Learning Network in my home town of Athy who have joined us for this very important debate. I also thank Deputy Kelly for all of his work in this area. I join with the Minister in thanking all of our serving Garda members for the job they do on behalf of all of us day in and day out, 24-7. It is most welcome and the Labour Party, in particular, wants to welcome and thank them, as the Minister has done. Unfortunately, however, morale among gardaí is as low as I have ever seen it and as low as many serving Garda members have seen it for a very long time. This is directly related to the recruitment of gardaí. In my own constituency of Kildare South, the number of gardaí has remained the same since 2020 despite repeated PR attempts to convey a different story. Currently, there are 147 gardaí across the Kildare division in Athy, Castledermot, Kildare town, Monasterevin, Newbridge and Rathangan. Since 2020, the number of gardaí in Kildare town has decreased by one, Athy remains unchanged at 34 and Newbridge has only increased by one. The overall figure across all stations in County Kildare is still 147. This is in addition to 37 retirements across the Kildare-Carlow division from 2021 to 2025. More worryingly, in recent months community policing across the Kildare-Carlow division decreased from 31 in May 2025 to only 21 in December 2025. Kildare is a county that has had a population increase to 250,000 and the lack of Garda visibility in that county is creating serious problems in our large towns and our villages. I welcome the fact the Minister is concentrating on visibility. It is the key to Garda policing and community policing into the future but it needs to be sped up and include the counties that border Dublin. That needs to happen very quickly. I also want to mention roads policing. In December 2025 we had 647 gardaí in our roads policing division, compared with 1,046 in 2009. The reason I bring that up, and not for the first time, is the traffic and commuter chaos that happens every morning on the way into the capital and the lack of visibility of gardaí on those stretches of road is very worrying. I have spoken to gardaí in County Kildare on this matter over the past six months and they all tell me that once an accident happens, their personnel are tied up for hours on end. This is happening almost every day, so we need to see an increase in Garda numbers in our roads policing division. We need to see visibility on our commuter routes into Dublin each morning. I also support the calls regarding domestic violence. In 20 years of public service, in my office, I have never before seen such worrying growth in domestic violence on a daily basis. We need to do more.

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