Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I will deal with the last point first. A recruitment and training capacity group has been established to support the achievement of increased recruitment in An Garda Síochána. The group is due to report to me in mid-2025. It is looking at a range of issues, including how to ensure that there is the training capacity to meet the Government's ambitious recruitment targets for the next five years. One of the issues that I know it will look at is whether or not an alternative training college or institution would be of benefit in trying to get more gardaí in. That will, to a large extent, depend on the level of interest we get from members of the public seeking to join.

In regard to the Deputy's comments about the population, of course, that is going to require there to be greater policing. As the population increases and as we create more criminal offences here in this House, there needs to be greater numbers of gardaí. However, we also need to look at innovative methods. We should not underestimate the role being played by civilians within the force. For too many years, gardaí were doing jobs that could be done by civilians, such as HR, management and accounting jobs. Those are now being done by civilians. The benefit of getting civilians in to do these tasks is that we get more members of An Garda Síochána out on the streets. As I said, because of increased civilianisation over the past number of years, we have seen up to 900 gardaí get out onto front-line duties. That is the approach. We need to look at innovative measures and to try to recruit more numbers. I still have a target of 15,000 attested members in the force and a target of trying to recruit 5,000 members during the course of the Government.

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