I was listening to Pat Kenny today on Newstalk interviewing Alan Shatter, former Minister for Justice. Alan did well up to a point. He was talking about the reduction in garda numbers and how the Troika wanted the number reduced to twelve thousand. Alan said he was not prepared to go below thirteen thousand and that he and Brendan Howlin had “exchanges” in relation to the number. This would suggest that Brendan wanted a greater reduction than Alan. Maybe Brendan might disagree.
Listening to Alan, it was difficult not to agree with what he was saying. He was under pressure to make an impact on the finances by reducing the number of garda stations. Retirements and the embargo on recruitment had an effect on the strength of the force. There were many gardai tied up in clerical work who could be better employed providing the frontline service they were trained for. He was anxious to change the structure of An Garda Siochana and to implement the recommendations of the Garda Inspectorate.
This was all very reasonable and he was telling it like it was until he fell off the wagon. He went on to suggest that by closing the garda stations in rural areas, the service provided to the general public was not diluted. Speaking about Stepaside Garda Station in Dublin, which is one of the closed stations, he stated that the number of burglaries per capita there was the same as Dundrum which had a garda station. The implication being that the existence of a garda station in a particular area was not as important as having a patrol car available to attend to calls.
However Alan wants to spin it, closing a garda station in a rural area and moving those few members to a larger centre is simply not going to improve the service provided to those residents. Transferring gardai to an already understaffed busy centre will not impact positively on that rural area. Everybody knows that but still the authorities refuse to admit it.
Politicians and garda management lose credibility when they start using spin and statistics to defend what is really indefensible. There may have been a time when the ordinary Joe soap could be fobbed off with waffle but I suspect that those days are long gone. They would gain a lot more by telling it as it is and by not treating people as complete idiots.