I welcome the Acting Leader to his new role and wish him well with that. I will refer to a report that appeared in our local paper this morning. Local councillor, Micheál Frain, from Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon, is calling for a 24-7 staffed Garda station in Ballaghaderreen due to an increased amount of antisocial behaviour, including reports of people with e-scooters on paths and loud music at night. There is no presence in the community on a regular basis when these situations present themselves.

It highlighted for me something we have been calling for in here. I and my three colleagues around me, who are all from rural areas, have repeatedly brought up the lack of a presence of our Garda force in large parts of rural Ireland. The model is not working. I have called for a new rural model to be introduced. I have called for debates in this House on this topic. There are protections there. There is legislation An Garda Síochána can use to deal with a lot of these situations but it is about the presence and the actual enforcement.

It is hard to enforce something if you do not have the presence and the manpower on the ground to do the job.

It is not acceptable that we have to keep coming in here every two or three months to call for this debate. I hope we will have a debate on policing in rural Ireland as early in September as possible. In rural Ireland we are dealing with an older population, larger geographical areas and longer response times. These people are more vulnerable. I hope we can look forward to a debate in this House with the Minister for justice as early as possible in the new term.