Garda resources will be focused on "regular trouble or hot spots" for public disorder and street violence, the Garda Commissioner has said.
Mr Pat Byrne told the annual conference in Dublin of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI): "Localised areas will be charted and resources deployed to prevent and detect such behaviour."
He said this was "a priority matter insofar as I am concerned" and that feedback from the community suggested "a profound concern" with these areas.
Mr Byrne said there had been 38,896 public order offences in the six months from October 2000 to April 2001. A body composed of gardai, business people, academics and professionals was established by Mr Byrne last year to advise on solutions to public disorder and street violence. He said they would deliver their report next week.
The AGSI also adopted a motion to have better defence equipment issued to gardai, including longer batons and possibly CS gas.
An AGSI spokesman said the baton currently used was totally inadequate for use in public order situations.
Earlier yesterday the conference heard there had been a "dramatic fall-off" in the number of gardai applying for promotion to sergeant and inspector.
Mr George Maybury, general secretary of the AGSI, said a "very poor" financial incentive was the reason for the fall.
He said 144 gardai undertook the sergeant's examination this year, compared to 281 in 1995. And this year 36 sergeants undertook the inspector's examination, a fall from 98 in 1995.
Mr Maybury said there were far greater financial rewards available by working in any of the Garda specialist units, such as drugs, white-collar crime and sexual abuse.
The current maximum salary for a sergeant is £27,226. An inspector's maximum basic salary is £31,522. On the killing of Mr John Carthy in Abbeylara, Co Longford, Mr Maybury said: "The association does not consider an Oireachtas sub-committee the appropriate forum to carry out independent investigation.
"This is a function best left to a member of the judiciary."