Mr. Mark Toland:

There are about 1,200 personnel in Garda headquarters. There are 500 roles, in particular, in Garda headquarters that we want to be considered. There are 1,211 if one includes Garda headquarters, national units and specialist units. There are at least 259 in divisions, regions and districts, but this does not include personnel we considered as part of the crime investigation report. We considered front-counter services and call takers, in addition to staff who look after people who are detained in Garda stations. These personnel were not included as part of the review because we had already covered them in respect of crime. The numbers are significant. For every one person deployed at a front counter, six staff are required to run the service 24/7 for 365 days of the year. There are significant numbers of gardaí in roles in divisions and districts that we believe could be performed by trained member of support staff.

The total of 1,500 is a conservative estimate. Some of these personnel could be released pretty quickly. Some would need to be replaced and some have technical skills. Gardaí are being trained. This is quite a long process and expensive. Five years after recruitment, a garda might be trained to be a fingerprint expert, which means that, in effect, one is training someone twice. In other jurisdictions staff are brought in from universities or the business world and trained to be a fingerprint expert. They are not trained to be a police officer first. There are many gardaí doing very good jobs and who have a high level of expertise, but they are carrying out functions of a kind that are not performed by police officers in other jurisdictions; rather, they are performed by support staff.