Martin Callinan: Close stations for ‘efficiency’.

GARDA Commissioner Martin Callinan has recommended that “a couple” of 24-hour Garda stations be closed and opening hours in others reduced.

He told the Oireachtas Justice Committee he has also recommended to Justice Minister Alan Shatter that those stations already “effectively closed” be shut down, but that it is the “minister’s call” whether or not to accept his recommendations.

Mr Callinan said closing some stations or altering the opening hours in others was being done for “efficiency and effectiveness”, but not cost reasons. He said it only costs between €2,500 and €4,000 to keep a station open and maintained for a year.

During a submission and a questions and answers sess-ion on community policing, Mr Callinan said:

n490 gardaí, across all ranks, will retire from the force by the end of the year and a further 150 in January and February.

nThe drugs problem is not expected to improve in the short to medium term and heroin was “back on the scene”.

nThere was no national system for tracking Garda response times to callers, as it would cost “a hell of a lot of money”.

nAntisocial behaviour warnings issued by gardaí were effective, while anti-social behaviour orders from the courts were not.

Mr Callinan was repeatedly questioned by members in relation to his report, with each stressing the importance of rural stations in preventing crime and reassuring the local community.

Mr Callinan said he app-reciated the role rural Garda stations played in communities and reassured members there was “not going to be anything” like 200 station closures as reported in the media.

“There are a couple of stations who are open presently on a full-time basis that will close,” he said.

In addition, Mr Callinan said a “number of stations, in effect, are closed and have been for many years” and that these were “no-brainers” in terms of permanent closure.

But he stressed that although stations may close, gardaí would still be responsible for the affected areas.

He also said the hours of some 24-hour stations would be reduced.

On the drugs problem, Mr Callinan said he didn’t have a sense it would improve in the “short to medium term”. He said recent significant seizures of heroin suggested it was “coming back on the scene”.

He said cannabis cultivation has increased “exponentially”, particularly with the closure of head shops.

Mr Callinan thanked members for their expressions of sympathy at the tragic death of Garda Ciaran Jones, who lost his life trying to help motorists in Wicklow during October’s floods. He said Gda Jones was “a role model” for what community policing should look like.