Mr. Ronan Slevin:

While changing work patterns will not result in extra hours, each garda is still only going to work 40 hours per week. The fact that he or she is doing the 12-hour or ten-hour shift pattern does not result in any extra hours being delivered to the community.

On training, we have two main issues, the first of which is that there has been nearly non-existent in-person training since Covid-19 began. One of the big issues with that is that gardaí are obliged to log on to an online video which means they cannot interact or have any questions they have answered. It is a requirement to have the training done. Gardaí are not provided with any specific time in their working day for that training to be completed so they could be called away in the middle of the online video and will be expected to return to it at some point while still performing all their other core duties.

The other aspect of training would be driving training. We have a significant lack of qualified drivers in the force capable of activating blue lights and sirens and responding to calls. We have an overreliance on competency based driver level 1, CBD1, which is an assessment of a person's ability to drive a car but not actually training in the field of response driving.