Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

There can be variation in the numbers going in to each intake but the one thing that is very clear is that in no intake at the Garda College was there as many trainees as the college had capacity to train. At no stage did 200 or even close to 200 attest. In some cases, the figures were far below that. The difficulty is that the Government has been talking for quite some time now about 1,000 gardaí per year being attested. We are nowhere near this. It makes me inclined to accept the position of the Garda Commissioner when he said it was just not possible to train 1,000 gardaí this year. Does the Minister agree with that?

Last year, the numbers trained in Templemore were around 400 short of that target. Does the Minister accept that he, the Department and the Garda still do not have a grip on the recruitment and retention crisis? How many does he expect to attest in total this year?

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