Richard O'Donoghue: Number-Plate Cameras to Catch Robbers
Richard O'Donoghue addresses the National Safety Camera Strategy and calls for number-plate recognition to be rolled out nationally to help Gardaí track vehicles linked to robberies in County Limerick. He argues that technology must be used to protect lives and homes and criticises research that is focused only on Dublin rather than all 32 counties.
Proposal for number recognition
Richard O'Donoghue sets out a clear request: include automatic number-plate recognition in the National Safety Camera Strategy. He explains how camera data could be fed directly to Gardaí to locate vehicles used in county-level robberies and to assist ongoing investigations.
Operational pressure on Gardaí
O'Donoghue highlights the pressure on Garda numbers in County Limerick and elsewhere, arguing that limited personnel resources require smarter use of technology. He describes a six-week investigation in his own area where offenders entered backyards and houses and where vehicle tracking could have helped.
Wider uses and policy implications
He notes that safety cameras can serve multiple purposes, including speed enforcement and detection of offences, and that a national rollout would provide fuller data for Garda services. O'Donoghue frames this as both a public-safety and policing tool.
Research and rural representation
Speaking after attendance at a Budget Oversight Committee session, he criticises academic research that draws only on Dublin data while making recommendations for the whole country. He urges that research and policy reflect the experiences of all 32 counties, not just Dublin.
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Thank you, Commeann Comhairle. Minister, National Safety Camera Strategy. No objections to any of that. But what I would like to see is some joint uptinkin'. In County Limerick at the moment, in a lot of areas, the Gardaí under pressure with the amount of numbers that they have, we have an awful lot of robberies that are actually taking place in counties. And what I'd like to see rolled out in the camera strategy is number recognition, which will actually help the Gardaí catch vehicles that are actually coming around and robbing people at night time and during the day or whatever they are. It actually can track them going through all the different towns and villages and byroads that they are using, and give that data directly back to the Gardaí services. We have a limited amount of Gardaí in this country, so we need to use technology to help them. And also to protect people's lives as well as protecting people's homes. So what I would like to see rolled out in the strategy is this number recognition that can come in place. As I said, there's one investigation at the moment. Six weeks they're going on in an area, around my own area at the moment, trying to locate people that have been inside in people's backyards and in their houses, at the back of their houses, looking for opportunities to rob them. But yes, we can track down these vehicles because at certain times we have descriptors of them, but the Gardaí can't seem to track them down. But if we had the camera recognition on the roads that they were leading up to this, we would be able to find out the location of these vehicles, where they're coming from, where they're going to, and we would be able to assist the Gardaí. We can also use them then for the speed and offences, 100%. But if we're doing national safety cameras, we also should do national safety cameras for protecting of people's properties and lives. So that means that we have the full data for our Gardaí services. I was actually in the Budget Oversight Committee yesterday and I'd done a small bit of research myself, and I had people there, they were professors and doctors, and they were giving us research, and they were telling us about what about Rhode Island, they were naming out all the things for Rhode Island, what should be improvements in speed limits and all the rest of it. And I asked them themselves, I said, where are you from? All three of them, Dublin. But they had comments for the whole part of the country, but all their data was based in Dublin, and research was based in Dublin. There's 32 counties in Ireland. There's more than Dublin in Ireland. So when they're doing research, they should need to research the whole country.
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