Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

All of us in the House offer our condolences on the death of Garda Kevin Flatley. I agree with the Garda Commissioner, who said we need a reset for how we, as a society, think about roads policing. However, the same Commissioner sat before the Joint Committee on Justice on 15 May 2024 and committed to the addition of 150 new gardaí to roads policing. There were to be 75 in 2024 and 75 in 2025. You can guess that the actual number who have gone into roads policing from that competition is zero. Forty sergeants and 246 gardaí came through the competition.

Actions speak louder than words. There are just over 600 gardaí in roads policing now. There are significant gaps all over the country, for example, in the mid-west and Limerick. In 2009, we had 1,046 gardaí in roads policing. What are the Minister for Justice, the Taoiseach and the Garda Commissioner going to do to back up the language of the need for a reset how we think about roads policing, with which I agree, by enforcing the laws with the volume of gardaí required and honouring what the Commissioner said to the justice committee last year? Nobody from that competition has been appointed.

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