Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are all conscious of that and we all want to pay tribute to the work members of An Garda Síochána do on a daily basis. A lot of this is down to that stress. I spoke to members of the service who told me that sometimes a call comes when there is an incident somewhere and they know there is going to be if not danger then certainly stress involved in that incident. They know they need at least four or maybe five people to attend but there are only two of them. When the two attend that incident they are often attacked, abused or insulted. They feel vulnerable. It has an immense impact on the morale of the service when engaging and dealing with situations like that. It is very similar to the situation in the Minister's former role as Minister for Health. Nurses in our hospitals all tell us that when there are supposed to be four nurses on a ward and there are only one or two, it puts stress on them that they are not able to cope with. It is a similar situation with the Garda. The average across Ireland at the moment is about 270 gardaí per 100,000 of population. Across the European Union, that should be 330 per 100,000. We have a job to do in order to get that up to the standard it needs to be at.

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