Garda superintendents are to become involved in recruiting candidates to the Garda Reserve at a local level to replace the current centralised recruitment system, according to Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.
The Minister said the current recruitment process was too complicated and slow and a localised system would be far more successful.
At his party's annual conference at the weekend, he said he would be meeting the Garda commissioner this week to ask him to instruct Garda superintendents to put ads in local papers and to seek suitable candidates from the community. "The present mode of recruitment is too bureaucratic. I want local superintendents to take responsibility for recruiting local reservists."
During a question and answer session with delegates, Mr McDowell said he would not be closing rural Garda stations while he was Minister for Justice. They were a local point of contact for communities and his view was that priority must be to continue that close contact between gardaí and communities.
Mr McDowell acknowledged failings in the judicial system and there was a need to speed up the system of justice and how it operated. He was impressed with how community courts operated in New York on a visit there recently, where certain offences were dealt with in hours.
Cllr Fergus McDonnell, Offaly, welcomed Mr McDowell's recent highlighting inconsistencies in prison sentences and bail. He called on the judiciary to "come down from their ivory towers" and see what it was like for crime victims.