Michael Collins

Overall sentiment: -0.03
Back to Debate

The Minister's legacy will be what he has delivered. At this present time, if we look at the garda allocations that were released in February, there was not one extra garda given to west Cork. The Minister has to stand before the Dáil and give us the reasons for that. He cannot say that there is not enough gardaí. There were 176. Obviously, there needs to be far more than that coming through. Gardaí have retired in west Cork over the past number of years but since 2022 zero gardaí have been sent to the Bantry division. That is an astonishing attack on the people of west Cork. There are no gardaí in Drinagh, Drimoleague, Kilbrittain, all these places and probably in Kealkill. There are gardaí coming out of the main divisional headquarters like Bantry and Skibbereen to try to cover those areas. That is not good enough. They need replacements similar to what has happened for generations. Why are these people being victimised? Like everybody else, I praise the gardaí who are out there because they are under massive pressure. I have been communicating with them. They run the Garda youth awards. It would be great to invite the Minister down and to be there sometime to see how good the young people are and how the gardaí can get the best out of the youth, including people like Damian White, Don Davis and Bridget Hartnett. We are very lucky to have some gardaí, but we do not have enough. It is a problem. The problem that we have now is that even if the Government is no longer closing the Garda stations, it has effectively closed them because there is no light on and there is no garda there anymore. Why have no gardaí been allocated to west Cork? The Minister needs to answer that question. There has to be a reason. There was only one deployed in the previous allocation. There is a real serious problem out there.

Sentiment score: -0.03