Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree that all parts of the country need to be adequately policed and not just our city centres. We are now back up to around 14,000 Garda members. Some 700 to 800 recruits will go through the Garda College this year. There will be 800 to 1,000 next year, and we anticipate we will be up to 14,500 gardaí again by the end of 2024. When the Garda College was closed during the pandemic, we lost over a year of recruitment. We are bouncing back from that now. Garda staff are being employed in unprecedented numbers to free up gardaí. We have more than 3,000 Garda staff. That is an increase of 43% from 2015.

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