Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If we were looking at an average number, we would not under-recruit every single year. Why is there not a year in which we slightly over-recruit and actually go above what we believe we will need? Every year we under-recruit. Let us turn that around and perhaps over-provide to at least give us some possibility of some day reaching the ceiling. At the current rate of recruitment, we will never reach 9,500. The idea that we should accept this natural gap or attrition rate that we know exists and fail to address it is not acceptable. The way forward is to slightly over-recruit in one year to determine whether we can actually meet the shortfall.