My constituency is split across two separate Garda divisions. If I look at the numbers on a spreadsheet, I can tell the House that the number of gardaí in Meath–Westmeath is 551. That area is 4,200 sq. km. Roscommon–Longford has 581 gardaí and that area is over 9,000 sq. km. I do not need a spreadsheet to tell me that we do not have enough gardaí in our towns, villages and rural communities. I will give a very good example. There was recently a meeting in Rochfortbridge, Westmeath, on road safety and roads policing. The garda who attended, a very dedicated garda heading the traffic corps, came from Navan, which is 50 km away. What does that say to the people of Rochfortbridge? What does it say to the people of a very small rural community if the head of the traffic corps has to travel 50 km from a major town to their little rural village? It says their concerns are not being heeded and will always be of lower priority than those of other areas. That is incredibly unfair. It is also incredibly unfair for the people living in Longford, who, when they call the Garda station to get a response to an incident, are told the gardaí cannot go out because they cannot leave the station unstaffed. That is not a functioning Garda model; that is a broken Garda model. It is also very unfair on our gardaí. Mullingar gardaí secured the first conviction for human trafficking in this State. That did not come about by chance. That came about through dedication, good policing and an absolute determination to see that to the end. This needs to be fixed. Sinn Féin has put forward proposal after proposal but the Minister needs to act on them because my constituents deserve better.

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