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

On the overall figures, I have a breakdown for community gardaí in the DMR region 2019 in comparison to 2023. This includes DMR east, DMR north, DMR central, DMR north central, DMR south, DMR south central and DMR west. The figures were 301 in 2019. They are 276 in 2023. While that is a decrease of 25, there has also been a decrease in our overall garda numbers since the pandemic due to the closure of the college to new recruits. We have seen a decrease but I am positive we are now in a situation where our garda numbers will start to increase.

Obviously, that will impact on all the various teams, including community teams. The figure of 276 is out of an overall figure of 3,719 Garda members.

Community policing is at the heart of An Garda Síochána and all gardaí have a role to play in it in the course of their duties. Community policing is fundamental to the new operating model that is currently being rolled across the country and has been fully commenced in ten Garda divisions. The new model will provide more front-line gardaí, increased Garda visibility and a wider range of policing services for people in their local area. It will divide service delivery within divisions into four functional areas, one of the most important being community engagement. This will allow for a greater and more consistent focus on community policing in all divisions. The Garda authorities have advised that a member of An Garda Síochána may be deemed to be a community garda where that person is allocated to a community policing team, CPT, and is responsible and accountable for applying a problem-solving approach to appropriate crime and policing quality-of-life issues in a specified geographic area through partnership and engagement.

I very much welcome the interactive map launched recently on the Garda website, which allows people to identify where the local community policing team is in their area. That system will continue to be developed in line with the continued roll-out of the new Garda operating model. The more Garda members we have, the more populated those areas will be. It is a really important element of the new operating model that people will be able to click in and see who is the dedicated policing community member in their area. More broadly, all Garda members perform community policing duties every day within their normal policing structures. The figures I have given are the ones we have to date.

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