While the Minister for Justice can claim to be delivering on Garda numbers, the public will demand that high-profile cases are solved, reports Conor Lally.
When the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, looks back on 2004 he will, no doubt, point to the Cabinet's approval of the recruitment of 2,000 extra gardaí over the next four years as the most significant development in the justice arena. Those sitting across the floor of the Dáil on the Opposition benches will have a different perspective. Gun crime continued to soar this year, the spread of cocaine continued unabated and eight gangland figures were murdered by their rivals.
Overall, serious offences decreased by 6 per cent in the first nine months of the year, but the provisional crime figures show a 40 per cent increase in the discharging of firearms (219 cases to the end of September). Rapes of females have increased by 32 per cent to 336 cases.
While the dust seems to have settled in Limerick, gardaí are continuing to encounter difficulties with serious gangland figures in west Dublin. And a number of high-profile, non-gangland murders remain unsolved.
On the upside for the Government, the ongoing dispute between the Irish Prison Service and prison officers, relating to overtime, seems to be nearing an end. Department of Justice sources say they are confident that the dispute will soon be resolved, with ongoing annual savings of around €25 million secured. This money will be ring-fenced for investment in the prison service, and it will also enable an end to the practice of slopping out. Some 400 inmates and former inmates are suing the prison service over slopping out, claiming their human rights have been violated. The issue emerged earlier in the year when Limerick solicitor John Devane began lodging claims on behalf of his clients.
THAT THE PLANNED recruitment of an extra 2,000 gardaí was a major development this year is not in doubt. An Garda Síochána has become increasingly short of manpower in recent years. The time spent dealing with immigration and asylum-seekers has grown significantly in the past decade, while specialist Garda units, such as the Criminal Assets Bureau, have taken resources at the expense of traditional policing. The Garda Representative Association claims that 4,000 extra officers, rather than 2,000, are needed to redress manpower shortages.
During the election campaign of 2002, the Government's promise to deliver the extra gardaí was the central theme of its justice manifesto. However, no sooner had the FF/PD coalition been returned to office than worsening economic conditions led to the expensive recruitment plan being shelved. In the meantime, McDowell has been forced to grin and bear taunts from the Opposition whenever political gains could be made from reminders about the recruitment drive that didn't happen.
However, in October, McDowell was finally able to deliver on the promises. Some 1,096 trainees will be taken in next year and in 2006 and 2007, falling back to 661 in 2008. Over the same period, however, it is expected that the Garda will lose 1,350 members through retirement. While it will cost €330 million to hire, train and equip the extra 2,000 recruits, maintaining them on the payroll would cost around €124 million a year at today's prices.
Some 400 gardaí will be diverted into the force's new dedicated traffic corps, the establishment of which was also another significant development of the last 12 months. Some €30 million is to be made available next year for the establishment of this corps, which hopes to reduce fatalities on roads by 25 per cent, to below 300 by 2006. It is planned that by 2008 the Garda traffic corps will be 1,200 strong, with around 340 members patrolling roads at any one time.
While McDowell will be heartened by these positive developments, the public often judges the performance of the Garda on its ability to solve high-profile cases. None was more talked about this year than the murder of Rachel O'Reilly. The young mother of two was bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of her home near Naul, Co Dublin, on October 4th. Gardaí have gathered evidence, but not enough to charge the chief suspect.
It was the crime of the year as far as the public is concerned and gardaí insist that O'Reilly's killer will be brought to justice. They know that failure to solve the murder would take the shine off progress elsewhere.