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Originally Posted by crooks
They pretty much had to introduce it due to the fact the opposition (who are very compotent on Law and Order) were hounding the government over the quite high rate of non-attendence - It's worked well, the rate was cut from 37% in 1997 to 14% in 2007.
I should also add Ireland has quite a proportionatly large police force (though the word police isn't used - they are called An Gardai Siochana, usually shortened to The Gardai) - how large is your county in population?
My Town (Blarney, about 3 miles outside Cork City) has 1 Garda station 12 Garda, for about 2,300 residents.
For Judicial purposes we are outside Cork City's jurastriction, and are part of the surrounding Cork County, which is geographically much larger, but more thinly populated, being predominantly rural (and so crime rates are very low) - though in the city, which is where I work, play and consider my spiritual home, crime rates are much higher (far beneath the levels of most other countries even at this though, we ranked 5th on the Global Peace Index!).
My town might as well be in Switzerland, very peaceful - if you ever want to escape urban life, Rural Ireland is the place to go.
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Suffolk County is 975 square miles with a population of about 1,500,000 but we also have a 2,600 member county police department dont ask why the police and sheriff are separate agencies; politics plays a very big role here) plus about 800 officers employed by 30 or so town and village police departments in addition to a mere handful of New York State Police troopers and New York State Park Police officers. I do believe though that a county to you Brits and Irish is really more like a state to us Americans.
I recall reading on Wikipedia that Ireland also has sheriffs, do they basically perform the same things as our sheriffs do like courthouse security, civil process, evictions, warrants, county government building security, prisoner transport to state and federal correctional facilities, etc? Do they handle any police functions or is that specifically up to the Garda?
One of my great great grandfathers served in the RIC before immigrating to the US so I do have some connection to the Garda and the Garda is the successor agency to the RIC.