Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I can only speak for myself but I made it clear as the year went on that the target was 1,000 but that it would be difficult to reach. The numbers I outlined at the outset, which include those who have been attested, who have gone through the college and who will be in the college, will be close to, if not beyond, 800 for this year. It is not the figure of 1,000, as I have been saying for some time, but, when the college reopened following its closure in 2014, it took two or three years to get sufficient momentum to get 700 or 800 going through the college. In a year and a half, we have managed to get to a point where, by the end of this year, we should have over 800. Obviously, we are looking at a similar figure for next year. There will be a new recruitment campaign in January and I anticipate that we will continue to see the numbers increasing over the next number of months.