Mr. Drew Harris:

We are focusing on distributing gardaí to where the emerging pressures are. Until now, the distribution has been pretty even. We built up numbers in the northern region, the Border region, more than in other areas. In the future we will see a concentration on the northern region, plus the Dublin metropolitan region, because numbers in these regions have fallen behind. At the same time, ours is an expanding organisation; therefore, there should be more gardaí everywhere.

We are going through process of the civilianisation and modernisation of our workforce which will see the displacement of a further 500 gardaí. The actual increase in the size of the operational footprint this year is in the order of 800 members, which is significant. We should see the impact of this everywhere. We are more than happy to provide Garda staff in County Meath and other areas and displace Garda members from roles within stations into operational duties, where possible.

The importance of visibility has been made clear to me on a number of occasions because people want to see gardaí. As we build our new divisional policing model, an important and central aspect of it will be community policing, of which a local connection and visibility are important parts.