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

It is important to note that policing is a career that people are choosing. Across the recruitment campaigns this year and last year, we had 11,500 people apply to join An Garda Síochána. At a time of full employment, that is a significant number of people who still want to join. Obviously, that does not negate the fact that people are leaving on the other side. As well as making sure that we have more members to alleviate some of the pressures and stress that people are under, I have been engaging with the Garda Commissioner and the representative organisations to see if there are other measures we could take to support people in staying on.

That is the engagement I am having currently with the Minister for public expenditure and reform. It has resulted in the increase in retirement age. We have increased the age of entry. There are separate measures that I hope we will be able to progress shortly to address some of the issues gardaí have raised. We are investing significant funding, with an increase of 25% in the last three years alone, again to try to make sure that while the job has changed, which I absolutely accept, it has changed in a good way. For example, last week I met members of the roads policing unit in Cork. They were able to show me the hand-held device they have which enables them to deal with a person on the roadside without ever having to go back to their car, let alone their station. The changes are not all bad. Some are actually positive and enable gardaí to do their job in a really effective way.

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