I am proud to stand here and call Ballaghaderreen my hometown. I was proud to stand with people of Ballaghaderreen at a well-organised and well-attended vigil in the town on Sunday night. Ballaghaderreen is a good town with good people.

The sole purpose of the vigil was to send a clear message to this Government and to the Garda Commissioner that we need gardaí and we need to see. The falling number of gardaí is an issue I have raised repeatedly in this House and with the Garda Commissioner, although to no avail with him. Officially statistics tell us that there are four gardaí and one sergeant in Ballaghaderreen. If that, of course, was the reality, I would not be raising this issue today. Like many rural areas, we do not see gardaí. That is not the fault of the gardaí themselves. They are under pressure and are stretched. I am asking for the Taoiseach's support for my ask to the Garda Commissioner for a rural Garda plan to ensure an adequate allocation of gardaí, not just being officially listed as being at a station but actually out on the ground and visible. There is fear in many of our rural communities but in towns like Ballaghaderreen there is also defiance and unity. We want positive action and we want to see gardaí out on the beat for our communities.

I thank Deputy Kerrane for raising this important issue and for the constructive way in which she has done that. I know of the strength of feeling in the community of Ballaghaderreen which she is bringing to the floor of the Dáil here. I want to assure the Deputy that we take the safety of people living and working in rural Ireland very seriously. Preventing crime does not just mean putting gardaí on the beat although that is important. It also means supporting the work of the National Rural Safety Forum. A lot has been achieved during the lifetime of that plan but it requires that multiagency and multisectoral whole-of-government response also. I will convey to the Garda Commissioner and to the Minister for Justice her views on the policing needs of Ballaghaderreen and I will ask the Minister to come back to the Deputy directly.