Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State mentioned that there has been an 11% increase since 2018 but I want to put that into context. There has been a 45% decrease since 2010 so we are only playing catch-up. The Minister of State said that, in an ideal world, community gardaí would have a visible presence – the feet on the beat. We do not live in an ideal world. We have lived under Fine Gael Governments since 2011. In this time, community Garda numbers have been decimated. In 2010, the year before Fine Gael came into power, there were 508 community gardaí right across Dublin. The latest figures I have, from 2020, show that we now have 278. That represents a 45% decrease in the number of community gardaí. This happened on the watch of the Minister of State, and parts of my city are being abandoned.

See this speech in context