Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

At the two attestations I have been at, I was impressed by the fact that some of the people were clearly over 35 years of age. There is a benefit to this. People are well able to do Garda work after the age of 35 so there is no reason we should not be recruiting them. As Deputy Brabazon has said, the allowance is €354 at present. I want to see how we will get on in terms of the recruitment campaign we ran recently. I am hopeful that for the next intake into Templemore we will see the type of numbers we saw on 10 March, when we had 201 people starting. On 9 June we had 170 starting. We will see on 25 September and 25 November how many numbers we get. If we get more than 200 in each of them, we will be doing well and it will be a good sign.