Resource the Gardaí to help tackle organised crime—Ó Murchú

of context that we have more teachers in Ireland and working in Ireland than ever before.

“The pupil-teacher ratio is lower than it was in the past. We are having at least some success recruiting and retaining teachers but there is a real challenge as well. We are in a period of full employment and a period of very fierce international competition for talent.

“This is true in the public sector and the private sector. It is true for well-paid jobs and for poorly paid jobs. I do not know anyone who is not struggling at present to recruit and retain staff for this reason. It is not as simple as saying that putting up pay necessarily solves the problem because other people will then put up pay also and they are still competing for a scarce resource and scarce talent. We have a pay deal with teachers. They ratified that pay agreement.

“We are implementing it. It involves improvements to pay, conditions and allowances. I expect that during the summer, and certainly before October, we will begin the process of engagement with the public sector unions, including the teachers’ unions, on the next deal,” stated An Taoiseach.

GARDAí feel that ‘no-one, including the government has their backs’, according to Dundalk TD Ruairí Ó Murchú who made the comment during a debate in Leinster House last week about organised crime.

The Sinn Féin TD said that ‘organised and disorganised crime have flourished in areas of high disadvantage, areas that nobody cared about for many years, under multiple governments of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’.

And while he welcomed the Drogheda Implementation Board and its plan, there are ‘still issues’. He said: ‘The Red Door Project and others may be glad of certain bits of funding, but nobody has the real multi-annual funding required to be strategic’.

If the government was serious about tackling organised crime, ‘it is about resourcing the Gardaí’ he said.

Deputy Ó Murchú said: ‘We have all spoken to gardaí who do not believe anybody, the Government included, has their back and do not believe they have the supports.

‘We know that there are issues with recruitment and retention and that there have always been issues with resourcing, training and equipment, so we need to provide the Garda with the supports needed.

‘We know that the addiction services are not there. We know that gardaí at times have to make up for the mental health supports that are not there. Let us be really clear. Let us see if we are serious about dealing with organised crime and drugs’.

Getting to grips with poverty is one of the core issues that need to be tackled. He said: ‘We have to level the playing field and bridge the gaps, and that means early family intervention, real supports and changing the way we do things altogether.

‘There will always be a need to give those supports to the Garda. When I was a councillor I probably spent more time dealing with gardaí than I did with council officials, and it was usually about drug debt intimidation.

‘I commend the work they do, but they do not have the resources or the capacity to deal with the level the government have let organised crime get to’.