Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important to stress, regarding my own engagement with the representative associations, and the relationship between the Minister for Justice and those associations, that the Garda Commissioner is the head of An Garda Síochána. The Commissioner and his senior management meet and engage with the representative organisations on a regular basis, as should be the case. I, as Minister, then meet with the Garda Commissioner on a regular basis and, obviously, where concerns are raised or issues arise, they are relayed to me. Separate to that, in another layer, I meet on a formal basis with the representative associations. I attend their conferences and respond to and engage with them on issues they raise. I work very closely with them in that regard. We have a conciliation council that deals with other matters, involving members of my own Department as well as the Departments of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, and Finance. There is continuous engagement between departmental officials and officials in An Garda Síochána. There are many different layers and ways in which engagement happens on a continuous basis. As I said, I meet informally with many of the representative organisations and members themselves. Often the best feedback someone will get comes from a member in a Garda station when visiting or popping in to a station in their own constituency. They can find out what is happening, what is going on on the ground and what is the feeling of members. There are many different ways in which I, as Minister, can receive feedback but I do meet with them regularly and certainly, the issues they raise are not forgotten but are worked on throughout the year. I will respond to them but also to the Garda Commissioner more generally.

When it comes to recruitment and retention, as I have said time and time again, nothing is off the table. We have increased the entry age and I hope, in the weeks to come, to be able to extend the retirement age for members. I have mentioned the training allowance and the investment in gardaí more generally in terms of supports for them personally but also in equipment and technology. A huge amount is being spent on ICT to help them do their job more efficiently. We cannot ignore the fact that the college was closed because of Covid-19 and I am absolutely confident that we would have at least 1,000 more members now than we currently have if the college had remained open. That said, it was closed for very good health reasons and I cannot change that, as much as I would like to. What I can do is make sure that the momentum is built as quickly as possible and while the figures for those being fully attested this year are only 200 so far, we know that those going into the college and those in training by the end of the year will be approximately 800. That is a positive number and if we continue to move in that direction, the overall numbers will start to increase. We did dip and we went below the 14,000. We are at approximately 14,000 now, not including our civilian staff. I hope with that building momentum of numbers coming through, we will start to see the numbers increase more generally. As I said, we have more numbers now than we had in 2015 but, obviously, they increased significantly with the increased recruitment when the college reopened. They have dipped now because of Covid and we need to see them increase more. A target of 15,000 was set but I do not believe it is high enough. We need to go beyond that and the Garda Commissioner has said that very clearly and I am sure everybody here would agree. A lot of work is being done and much of it has come from the representative groups and organisations. Those changes have taken time but they are coming to fruition now.