Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Some 596 gardaí were allocated to Limerick. Of those, 92 were superintendents, detectives and sergeants. There are 7,596 uniformed gardaí in the country out of 8,539, if one removes the detectives from that. Will the Minister explain why Dublin, with a population of 1.4 million, takes 44% of the new recruits? When there is a population of more than 5 million in Ireland, that is not proportionate for the area. How does the Minister expect us to police our counties when 44% of gardaí are deployed in Dublin? Going by population, outside that 1.4 million, that leaves 3.6 million people with 56% of the gardaí deployed. Even though some of the Garda stations might cover districts of more than 40 square miles, most of the gardaí are deployed to Dublin.

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