Electronic tagging to keep track of burglars
Fighting off criticism from Garda associations and opposition politicians, Ms Fitzgerald insisted that investment in Garda resources and numbers would make a “substantial difference” in combating roaming criminal gangs.
She yesterday announced an additional €5.3m was being made available to purchase 260 Garda vehicles between now and year-end.
The funding will purchase high-powered cars and surveillance vehicles to monitor and intercept travelling criminals, as well as the provision of more marked and unmarked patrol cars.
Ms Fitzgerald told the Dáil that, in addition to legislation allowing courts to impose consecutive sentences for repeat burglars and re-fuse bail, she was pushing through other legislation which would enable burglars to be tagged.
“I will be making changes in that legislation in relation to electronic tagging, so prosecutors can request electronic tagging and, indeed, gardaí can request it.”
Ms Fitzgerald said she believed it would be an “important” measure in dealing with the problem.
She said Garda research had indicated 75% of burglaries are committed by 25% of burglars.
She said investment in operational policing was as important as legislative changes and the €5.3m was in addition to €34m spent on the Garda fleet since 2012.
Ms Fitzgerald said she and Garda commissioner Noirín O’Sullivan will shortly publish a new strategy to combat burglary and related crime.
She said the current operation, codenamed Fiacla, had resulted in 14,762 arrests and 8,358 charges.
The president of the Garda Representative Association, Dermot O’Brien, said the announcement of the new cars was “a piecemeal solution instead of a cohesive plan”.
He said while the measure will go some way to replace old vehicles they would not create new capacity. “There is an urgent need for a cohesive plan to outline how many gardaí are required, and the resources they need, to police modern Ireland,” Mr O’Brien said.
“Once this is established, Government can outline their strategy to recruit, train, and retain those gardaí.”
He said the failure to invest in the force over time had “come home to roost”.
“The closure of 139 Garda stations has saved some 61,000 hours — the equivalent of 29 gardaí. We have lost 5m policing hours as 2,500 gardaí have not been replaced,” Mr O’Brien said.
Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Niall Collins asked Ms Fitzgerald to ask the Garda Inspectorate to conduct an “impact analysis” on areas where stations had been closed.
Ms Fitzgerald said there was “no correlation” between the closure of stations and rates of burglaries in those areas. She insisted communities had “benefited” from the closures in terms of increased Garda visibility and patrols.
Ms Fitzgerald was also questioned in the Dáil about the progress of an independent review of 320 allegations of Garda misconduct. She said 216 people had been informed of the outcome.
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