Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is the objective of the Government to build safer and stronger communities. In order to do so, we need more gardaí and we need to properly train and support them. We also need to invest in our Defence Forces, the Courts Service and the Irish Prison Service. I appreciate that gardaí are working hard, they are under a lot of pressure and their jobs are much more challenging than they would have been in the past for lots of different reasons. We need to increase the number of gardaí we have. In the budget we allocated enough money to recruit 1,000 new gardaí this year. That has to take account of the fact that there will be retirements, as there always are, and that there will be resignations, as there always are. However, it will still be enough to see a net increase in the number of gardaí this year, and that is what we expect and anticipate to happen. There was a slowdown in recruitment due to the restrictions brought in due to Covid and we will now see recruitment speed up. That is happening already. I met the Garda Commissioner about this before Christmas and I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Harris, about it as well.

In any comparisons we make, we have to bear in mind that the Garda does not just consist of sworn officers but that there are also Garda staff. Increasingly, we have Garda staff being employed and they are freeing up gardaí for front-line duties, which is of particular importance. The number of gardaí in the country fell to about 12,000 back in 2015 and that was after a period of austerity and retrenchment. By the end of last year it had gone up to 14,000 but I appreciate that is in the context of a rising population and we have to adjust for that, not just when it suits us but for all metrics. Our target is to get up to 15,000 gardaí.

On resignations, roughly 100 or so gardaí resigned from the force last year, which is roughly a 1% resignation rate. We live in a different world from the one we had five, ten or 15 years ago. Now it is typical in an organisation to see resignation rates of 5% or 6%. We have full employment and people are less interested in the job for life so a 1% resignation rate is not particularly high, either by international standards or when you compare it with other organisations. However, exit interviews are useful and I am glad they will happen.

On transfers, I am sorry if I did not answer the Deputy's question appropriately last week. I do not know the detail of that particular issue but if she wants to give me some more information on it, I would be happy to take it up with the Minister, Deputy Harris, who can then talk to the Commissioner about it.

See this speech in context