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

I absolutely believe we need to increase the numbers of reserves we have to support the work the Garda does and to allow for that increased presence and visibility on the ground as we continue to increase our normal Garda numbers as well. It has been a challenging 20 years or so since the reserve was established. There was a peak of about 1,400 reserves at a particular time, especially when there was a moratorium on the Garda College itself whereby no new recruits were coming out. When that opened up again, however, quite a significant number of reserves went through and were successful in becoming members of An Garda Síochána, which, of course, is very positive. Then the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland report in 2017 recommended that there not be any further recruitment campaigns until we had new regulations and a new strategy in place to try to remove some of the barriers that were there to reserve members working and supporting gardaí on the ground.

There has been, therefore, a body of work under way between the new strategy, which the Commissioner published in 2021, and now the new regulations, which will be published very soon to allow for a new campaign. When we opened up the college again only in the past year or two, we did not want the Public Appointments Service, PAS, process for the Garda recruitment campaign to compete with the reserve campaign. We needed to focus our priority on making sure we had as many members coming out of Templemore as possible. It is important, however, that we focus on the reserve at this stage to support it in the work it is doing.

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