The Minister for Justice has said that resources will be made available to help find the Ryan brothers, abducted in Limerick. "When it comes to saving human life, everything that must be done will be done," Mr McDowell said yesterday.
However, the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, told The Irish Times he had received no request for extra resources.
Mr Byrne said he was in constant contact with the Deputy Commissioner responsible for operations, Mr Noel Conroy, on the issue of resources for Limerick. However, he had not heard from him that resources were a problem.
Mr Byrne said that sometimes what was required was better management, not more resources. There were particular problems concerning serious crimes in Limerick. "But the investigation of these crimes has been very successful. There are ongoing efforts by the gardaí and the community to solve these problems. The only way is to put these people through the criminal justice system," he said.
The Minister for Justice told journalists yesterday he hoped the young men would be found and brought back to their families.
"I hope the people holding them realise how insane and how cruel a strategy they have adopted," he said. "There is no reason to torture families like this."
Asked to comment on claims from the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors that there were insufficient gardaí in Limerick, he said the number had been increased from 420 to 460 over the past number of years. "We have to make maximum use of the gardaí there," he said.
Asked if there was an underutilisation of existing resources, he said he did not think so, but there were a number of things that gardaí had to do which they found frustrating, like escorting prisoners and administrative tasks. Garda numbers would be increased from 11,850 to 12,500 as soon as possible.
Referring to AGSI claims that overtime had been cut back, Mr Byrne said there was provision for a 2 per cent increase in Garda overtime in this year's Estimates, but the Garda authorities had been asked to use overtime to get the best use out of the available resources.
Referring to the problem of crime in Limerick, the Garda Commissioner said: "People have been anxious to shake off the epithet of 'stab city', but there are peculiar features to Limerick, arising from mistaken decisions in the past, leading to ghettoisation. There has been a failure to have mixed housing."
A number of measures had been undertaken to combat crime there, like closed-circuit television.