Mr. Drew Harris:

There are a couple of aspects to that. With regard to resources overall in the Dublin metropolitan region, DMR, they are stretched. Even at the last passing-out parade, almost 130 from the class went to various stations in the DMR. In part, the DMR is the area with the most churn. It feeds the national units also. It suffers owing to proximity with the national units. It is just a particular characteristic of it. We recognise, however, that the rural regions are pretty strong and that their numbers are up to where they were in 2011. We have to increase the DMR number to its previous strength also.

On serious and organised crime, we have a good and well-oiled response when these matters flare up. At all times, proactive operations are ongoing. The Deputy will have seen that not a week goes by without us having a significant success in the recovery of firearms or the recovery of large amounts of drugs. That gives a scale of the drug business in Ireland.

Beyond that, I refer to the use of our resources as we build up our numbers to 15,000. We will get to that figure. It will take us until the end of 2021 to be realistic about how many people we can recruit over that period along with the cessations we will have. We need to look to what technology can do in increasing our efficiency and our effectiveness, and that is why we are pleased to see the introduction of measures such as body-worn video. It often takes the heat out of incidents on the street in the first place. It can help with resolving complaints, it can provide good evidence for court proceedings, and it can speed up criminal justice procedures.

On the use of automatic number plate recognition, ANPR, it can be a really effective tool for us because much of the crime we see involves vehicles which are ringer vehicles. They are stolen vehicles which give the identity of a legitimate vehicle and they are then used for crime for a period of six or seven weeks. That will give us a good insight into that as well as the movement of travelling criminals throughout our road network. We welcome that but there is an investment in both body-worn video and ANPR.

We also have processes of our own ongoing. The investigation management system is being brought in, which will provide us with a far greater insight as investigations are ongoing. We can then join up accounts and investigations and we can have a cross-district and a cross-division response to the criminality of certain groups. That is difficult at the moment when we have such a paper-based process. That digitisation will make a difference and it will free us up from some of our bureaucracy and paper-bound administration.

There is a lot happening in the growth of the organisation and in the systems within the organisation. The Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland talks to both of those matters. It is not just about our strength but how we use that strength, and it is not just the capacity of the organisation but the capability that we wish to unlock within that. Digitisation is part of that. The new divisional structure is the second part of that in freeing up our people from administration, freeing up our police commanders for police work and making our gardaí more responsive to local community needs.

It is an exciting time and a time of huge endeavour. There is much to be optimistic about. At the same time, when it comes to recruitment we are pretty much at saturation point in the amount of new staff we can bring in. We have brought in a lot of recruits who are now probationers and are working their way through probation. The additional supervision has been important in receiving them into the organisation and making sure they have the proper mentoring and training, but 800 recruits per annum is the maximum we can run at in our training capacity and in the capacity of the divisions to receive them. There are many positives but the Deputy is right that we can always ask for more. However, I would want to see these reforms and the digitisation start to get traction before I would say we need to bounce up, as it were, to 16,000 members.