Mr. Drew Harris:

On 31 August this year, we had 14,234 sworn Garda members while on 31 December 2014, we had 12,799, which is an increase of almost 1,500. We will need a further increase of 800 to get to a strength of 15,000. It is also important, however, to talk about how we use these Garda members. Garda staff have also increased and numbers now stand at 4,000, 1,000 of whom will enable us to displace gardaí to front-line duties. That is yet to happen and it is quite a challenge because we do not have 1,000 sworn Garda members doing administrative duties and we will have to be more inventive about what roles staff can take on, such as organisational support roles like front-desk roles, CCTV, command control, etc. We see staff doing these jobs into the future.