Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Hang on, now. That is like saying we were asked to build at a point in time, we built for that and that was it, and we were not worried about looking into the future. If we were building infrastructure in the State on that basis, God forbid what would happen. It is akin to saying that we will build a broadband network and not take into account the capacity of population growth, future needs or future demands.

In 2016, there were 200 more gardaí assigned to headquarters in Harcourt Street. There were over 1,000 gardaí, which was the official figure that was given, and this building was built for 880. Growth in population is natural and requires growth in Garda numbers. Unfortunately, the Government is not succeeding in that as only an additional 19 gardaí were delivered last year, although that is a different point. There have been 400 more assigned to headquarters in the past five years and the Minister of State is 500 places short. The Minister of State has built somewhere which he turned the key on in November of last year. It is great that it came in on budget and came in on time, but it is 500 places short of what is needed in a Garda headquarters. There must be answers somewhere in relation to that.

What went wrong that nobody saw why we were building a place for 880 when we had more people assigned to Garda headquarters when the application went in? What might happen if we increase the number of people who are assigned to headquarters in the future? Will we leave any additional capacity for expansion? Before the project started, these numbers started to increase.