Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At a time when we celebrate the centenary of service by the members and staff of An Garda Síochána, I am pleased to say that the Government is in a position to continue to increase the number of gardaí on our streets. A sign of that was seen last week with the new recruitment competition that was launched by An Garda Síochána through the Public Appointments Service.

Budget 2022 includes an unprecedented allocation, in excess of €2 billion, to An Garda Síochána. As I said earlier, this is an increase of one third on funding provided in 2015. It specifically includes provision for the recruitment of up to 800 gardaí and 400 Garda staff this year. Many of the 800 gardaí to be recruited will be drawn from this competition. I am pleased to note that there has already been great interest from the public, with 3,425 applications received last Thursday and Friday alone. I anticipate those numbers will increase. It is important to note that for the first time there has been a significant increase in the number of women, members of new Irish communities and people from minority groups who applied compared to the last competition and that is very welcome. Communities need to see members of their own community representing them in An Garda Síochána.

I welcome the Commissioner's leadership in emphasizing the need for greater diversity in the ranks of the service and in its behaviours and support structures. An Garda Síochána must reflect all the communities it serves and embed the principle of human rights as the foundation and purpose of policing in Ireland. This has included changes to Garda uniform policy, as we saw recently, the establishment of the Garda national diversity forum, and representation from diverse and minority communities in the Garda Reserve. In the coming months, the Commissioner will set out his plan for Garda Reserve recruitment for this year.

An Garda Síochána is working to produce a combined internal and external equality, diversity and integration strategy early this year. There is a huge amount of work being done to focus on how we can increase Garda numbers, as well as how we can increase diversity and ensure the gardaí are reflective of the communities they represent. I wish to stress that the recruitment competition is open until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 16 March 2022, and details are available on www.publicjobs.ie, so as to encourage even more members of the public to put their names forward.

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