Mr. Mark Toland:

Absolutely. They have what is called continued professional development, and it is beyond the Garda college. They have trained sergeants and gardaí, traditionally based on divisions, but in the moratorium on recruitment they stopped doing the continued professional development, and some of those units collapsed. They no longer existed. They are just starting to build up that capacity again but they are playing catch up. They are probably four or five years behind some of the training. They are retraining the majority of gardaí in interview techniques training, and that is a significant and ambitious target to try to achieve. Our Crime Investigation report suggested that training needs analysis to consider the critical needs and the gaps in terms of gardaí out policing now.

In terms of the new course, the feedback on the participants coming through the new course is very positive. The new training programme will give many of those people coming through the system now the skills, but they have a gap of people between 2009 and 2016 who probably did not get the training they needed. They are now trying to play catch up.