Lisa…
Yes. The rural area is a different story altogether.
Even at the best of times it would take a squad car at least 15 minutes to where I live.
So to a certain degree you have to rely on self preservation.

@stray – assuming said squad car was sitting at the station.
They don’t need a station…they can patrol as effectively without one and if we take the money from the stations and buy more cars then the response times should be better.

Buildings do not stop crime.
Enforcement f the law should prevent re-occurrence and we need more Garda patrolling for that and a justice system that actually punishes perpetrators.

Living in Cork city center I’ve never had the Gardai arrive in less than 30 minutes, and that included a call over a potential rape (45 minutes to respond). In the end it wasn’t, but we didn’t know that at the time.

That’s if they actually spent the money they save by closing Garda stations on cars, they have no intention of doing that, that money is going straight into shite banks or over to our eu dictatorship

@Julie, this is true but we are looking here at the consequences and not the reasons for the closures (I think most can agree the reasons are not ideal!).

So I believe we can save good money by closing buildings that we need to maintain 365 days a year but are only manned maybe a few hours a day during the day (when hardly any crime happens).
Good times or bad there is no reason to maintain these and if people feel that this will increase crime then I believe people don’t understand how crime operates and criminals are in no way fearful of a building that is closed up at night.

Yes, if building closures are paired with a reduction in patrols then this is an issue.
But the two are not and should not be so strongly linked.

I think you are wrong, where I live the guard lived in the station there was a house joined at the back, now it is one to be closed down. There are many other ways to save good money and people’s safety should not be one of them! How do you know that the guards were only in these stations for few hours a day , my guards station is on that list and he was there a lot of the time. Save money in other areas before you put people’s safety unnecessarily on the line.

More cars by the end of it you won’t have enough Garda to man them. They made five units out of four so stretching resources and they want to get rid of more Garda. There is no comeback from this. They will run it into the ground. It is not a profit making organisation but that is the way they are treating it.

At the risk of sounding a bit over dramatic,It is like turning a light house off. The rural Garda station is more than a building to those who live in the countryside.It is a beacon that provides a sense of comfort and safety to those who live in rural Ireland. It is one of those kind of things that seem to tax the understanding of city folk.You have to live in a rural area to get it.Post offices,Churches and Schools and Garda stations are part of the community at large in rural Ireland and they should be preserved.They are an integral part of the fabric of rural Ireland and Their closure is part of the reason for the depopulation trend that is happening as we debate.You cannot meet someone at the patrol car. You cannot wait at night for your lift home at a patrol car.A patrol car does not provide a safety zone for people who may not have transport and may not be in a mobile reception area and may rely on a friendly neighbour passing by.Taxis are not an option for all due to the expense and the limited hours they are available….the list goes on and it only begins to make real sense if you live in the country,A place a lot of people describe as home.

After watchng last weeks late late show, I went out of my way to purchase a samurai sword. BTW Im trained in 5 different forms of martial arts (all black belts) and have a phd in tanto fighting from japan, so I should be fine.

how right you are wood it not be better for the country to get rid of some councilles the senate and cut the number of TD.s for starters. wood that not be a lot better way of starting

They should definitely get rid of the gardaí guarding the Dáil. In fairness, like.

Ever get the feeling your being sacrificed for people who think they are a superior to you.Well get used to it because our Government has.

Or a Doberman called ‘Harry’ as in ‘dirty Harry’.

This is all happening regularly again. My area is covered by a district hq and 2 smaller stations. If the lone Garda in the small station needs to make an arrest he has to wait for 2 guards from the hq to assist him. If the call is a serious one he has told me that he can’t go on his own but has to wait for a car from the hq which is 20k away to assist him. If the hq car is busy with another call then so be it. It’s a joke

P.S., Shatter’s local station has had *increased* staffing. He really couldn’t give a crap unless it affects his vote potential in his constituency.

Similar story in Limerick when I was teenager. Happened on two guys robbing our house, they took off and I rang the gardai telling them the direction they were running in and that they were probably heading for Cal’s Park.

About an hour later two detectives showed up at my house, when I asked what happened they said they had missed the call cause they were on lunch. Their investigation comprised of them asking me if a CD stack on the living room had been knocked by the intruders, I said I didn’t know but probably not. They took the CDs away with them anyway and that was the last I heard about it.

I wish i were joking about that. Took me about 9 months to get the CDs back too. :-/

I had an incident like that was minding a house for a friend in tralee and a foreign man force his way into my house I was alone and rang the guards, they had to keep ringing because they couldn’t find the house not too hard to find to be honest, eventually I got the man out of the house and the guard were still ringing this was 15 mind later I was a 5-6 min drive from the Garda station, when they rang I said I had got the man out but didn’t know where he had gone they just orite your grand so and didn’t even bother calling to house to make sure the man had gone still confused about why they acted like that, that really was my only interaction with guards so I don’t know was that a once off thing

So it wasn’t just us then.

I don’t like to knock the Gardaí as an organization. I’ve found them great when I’ve actually engaged with them. I just find them chronically under-resourced, and badly prioritized and rostered.

It’s not the Garda who arrives late who’s at fault, nor the person who directed them according to the rules and guidelines given to them. It’s a failure of the system to provide enough boots on the ground at the times their needed, along with a failure to recognize personal civilian safety as a top priority in policing.

That line of reason has worked out so well for the US

@nial,you missed the sarcasm on that one

Dang! Carry on, nothing to see here…

The law allows you to use reasonable force to protect your home and family from intruders.. Surely that was brought in with the knowledge that they would close rural stations.

Fear is an illusions!

Do stations transform into giant robots that prevent crime?

More gardaí on patrol is what’s required, not more stations. It doesn’t matter if the station is 50 miles away, what you need is patrolling squad cars ready to respond to an incident.

Problem is they do not have sufficient patrol cars as they are not replacing an ageing fleet. I would be less concerned about the closures if they dealt with the consequent resource requirements accordingly

Haven’t seen anyone assume that, but closing stations won’t make things any better. Crime will always exist, it’s just a matter of limiting it.

“Less Garda stations, means less gardai and therefore more time waiting for the Gardai to get to you if u need them” ???
That is nonsense and shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue.

Garda Stations are not storage facilities for Garda.
Most people want more Garda visible on our streets so the station is only needed to start and end the shift and the Garda can drive to and from them for that.
They don’t all hang out there like firemen waiting on a call.

Less rural part time stations does not mean less Gardai, the reality is the one man stations are run by a Garda from the bigger stations who drives over for a few hours a day in his personal car to stamp a few forms. If a crime happens outside of the station it’s not that one man Garda that’s dispatched to it. He’s affectively doing admin work for the day. If the commissioner promised more money to improve the Garda fleet from the savings made from the station closers I think we would all be happy with that because it would mean more patrols could take place. But he isn’t.. It’s all just a cost saving measure and there won’t be any extra patrols

In your dreams fella. Two mobile patrols would mean 2 extra vehicles. There will be no extra patrols once these stations close and that’s the reality.

@Noel, that poor woman to whom you refer would have not been at all better off if there was a Garda station next door as it would have been closed at 6pm.

Not sure if serious or just trolling.

Sarcasm. Government are spending €20 million renovating the national museum ,while closing gardai stations to save money. I think crime prevention is a tad more important than renovating a museum. Projects like that should be put on the back burner for a while.

60,000,000e on the EU Circus that is in town ……

It is absolutely about saving cash regardless of what the commissioner says. You have to remember that he was appointed by minister shatter so he will say whatever he’s told to say.

In that ad they had the phonewatch premium package with the wee blonde girl distracting the baddies with keyholders and schtuff while the gardai arrived. The normal packages don’t include her :o(

Well at the end of the day, I’m voicing my displeasure at stations being closed in general. It’s sad to see it happen. And as I said in a previous comment, out in rural areas Garda stations are a lot fewer, so the closest station could be a lot further away than it would be if a station closed in Dublin, Cork City, or Limerick City.

@rs…smart answer..I like it!
@dodge…Garda do not need a station to do their work as there should be more Garda patrolling as opposed to sitting in a station (that opens a few hours a day at most anyway).
So the stations are a non-issue regardless of where you live.

If a crime is happening then we call 999 and a Garda gets dispatched.
Generally they won’t be dispatched from some station where they all hang out waiting for your call – they get dispatched from a patrolling resource.
So a Garda in a building is a lot less useful to your and your crime than a Garda in a car/on a bike.

But this is all missing the point as people don’t want more Garda,…they want less crime and see more Garda as a means to that.
But the real means is the courts and the justice (or lack thereof) system that can lock a man up for 6 years for tax evasion on garlic (who should be free but paying back the money + a fine) but let a man walk who has 76 convictions (because his mammy didn’t love him the poor fella)…let him walk out and walk into yer house and burgle it.

This debate on buildings is disguising the issues that we are all really concerned about.

Ok so what happens when the garda arrest someone for burglary? Do they do the file in the back of the car ? Print it off in the boot? Pee into bottles eat from the glove box? And where the cell area for prisoners? You sure your not a Fine Gael policy planner?

You live in Dublin Tara ?
Go to an area in Donegal, Kerry, or Galway or any other isolated area , then you might appreciate
other people’s anxiety.

I’m guessing you live in Dublin or a bigger city, but when you live out in the country and you’re nearby station is closing down, and the next closest one is in town, it’s a bit of a bigger issue.

Eileen, you beat me to it! Great minds think alike!

Eh, thanks for looking me up but although I study in Dublin I am actually from Galway Eileen, a very small village in Galway. I understand the concern completely but the reality is that most of these stations are not serving the communities needs properly anyway as most responses are coordinated from a centralised station. There is a Garda station in my village yet when an incident occurred Gardai came from a local town because the station was closed. All I’m saying is that if these resources were redirected into ensuring more Gardai could drive around on patrol, show a presence, be on call etc I think it would have the same, if not a more useful impact on small communities.

Similar situation in my village.
Guards are in station for a few hours, then vanish. Next nearest station has been (unofficially) closed for years, since Sergeant retired.
Used to know local guards, now no idea who they are or when they are present. “Community policing” – what is that?!

Tara
Don’t be paranoid …. I did not look you up and if you are paranoid you change your privacy settings on you fb a/c Simples :) I asked were you from Dublin . okay so you’re not . My point still stands . .

I wear an Elvis onsie. They never cut me a break.

Everyday I’m hustling,
Flynn daddy

The Garda Reserve is our equivalent of the Special Constabulary.

Well there you go.

Sorted.

Why not just tag everyone in the country and patrol the air with drones armed them with guided missiles and cross reference peoples position with crime reports and deliver swift justice obama style. Sieg Heil Enda