Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will certainly take that away and look at it because I see the logic in what the Deputy is saying. The Garda Reserve has a very important role to play alongside growing Garda numbers, which we are now back growing with an annual recruitment campaign. Recruiting Garda staff is important. I have met many staff in Garda stations across this country in recent months. They are doing sterling work, core work, really important work, but work that frees up sworn members of An Garda Síochána to do front-line policing work.

I want to see a Garda Reserve recruitment campaign this year. Later this year, we intend to launch a new Garda Reserve recruitment campaign to get people who wish to be Garda reserves and support gardaí in their work. I accept that being a garda is an extraordinarily difficult job. Even the recent recruitment campaign did not try to suggest it was not. However, it is a job worth doing. It is an impactful job. It is a job in which someone can make a difference. I also accept it is a different job in many ways from what it was in the past with online social media, some threats gardaí face now and the intensity of the work. That is why it is so important that we have really good engagement and do everything we can to engage closely with Garda representative bodies and associations and listen to the views of gardaí. That is certainly what the Government will do.

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