Mr. Mark Toland:

Those are actually two separate things. The 83% refers to every member. That is every uniformed and detective member.

Up to 83% of gardaí in the organisation are on the front line. The definition of “front line” is quite wide, including anyone who has daily contact with the public. It could be someone receiving a 999 call, someone on a front counter, or someone dealing with a member of the public on the street. We found that other police services had tried to get rid of all of the back office support and become leaner at the top to protect that front line. Most European countries have suffered from recession and austerity, resulting in reduced police officer numbers. When we looked at the Garda Síochána over a five-year period, we did not see that same protection of the front line. It had lost many people from the front line but appeared to be supporting the back-office support. We felt that was the wrong approach.

Civilianisation is about professionalisation. When we talked to senior gardaí, such as superintendents and chief superintendents, they tended to talk about clerical support. Civilianisation to us involves people who examine fingerprints or a crime scene. There is a role for clerical support staff. However, we are looking at many of the technical aspects because they are training a police officer twice. They are training them to be a police officer and then to be, say, a fingerprint expert. There are many bright and energetic people coming out of universities with all sorts of qualifications which would mean they already have many of those skills. One only needs to train them to do the role, not to be a police officer.

We also found many police officers sitting in administration units. The divisional launch will immediately free up police officers to go back out on patrol-----