Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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14. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the assignment of new Garda Síochána recruits since the reopening of Templemore Training College, by division; and if she will confirm the recruitment of suitable candidates for service in Gaeltacht communities. [3037/16]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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This Government is committed to ensuring that An Garda Síochána has the capacity to provide effective and visible policing throughout the country. A crucial element of the Government's strategy is ensuring ongoing seamless recruitment to renew An Garda Síochána. With this in mind Budget 2016 made provision for the recruitment of 600 new Gardaí this year bringing to 1,150 the number of new Gardaí who will have been recruited since the reopening of the Garda College in Templemore in September 2014. To date there have been six intakes of Garda Trainees to the Garda College, giving a total intake of 550 with a further intake provisionally scheduled for 11 April 2016. So far 296 of these new recruits have been fully attested and are undertaking Garda duties in communities nationwide.

An Garda Síochána is fully committed to fulfilling their obligations under the Official Languages Act. In this regard, candidates who are fluent Irish speakers, and who also fulfil all other eligibility criteria, are assessed under a specialist Irish language stream. Successful candidates from this stream are allocated to Gaeltacht areas for a period of time as determined by the Garda Commissioner. To date 29 applicants who applied under the specialist Irish language stream in the last competition were successful.

In order to fulfil the recruitment commitment for 2016 a new recruitment campaign was launched in last November. That campaign, which closed on 6 January, has attracted strong interest with in the region of 16,500 applications received by the Public Appointments Service which is organising the competition on behalf of the Garda Commissioner.I am informed by the Garda Commissioner that in the recruitment competition which closed on 6 January, a total of 685 applied through the specialist Irish language stream. Successful applicants from this campaign can expect to start entering the Garda College from mid-year onwards.

I set out in the following tabular statement the information sought by the Deputy in relation to assignments by Division.

Distribution of Probationer Gardaí 2015 by Division

Division	Assignments	Division	Assignments
DMR East	10	DMR North	20
DMR North Central	23	DMR South	19
DMR South Central	20	DMR West	30
Kildare	15	Laois/Offaly	9
Meath	5	Westmeath	5
Wicklow	10	Cavan/Monaghan	10
Donegal	10	Louth	10
Sligo/Leitrim	5	Kilkenny/Carlow	10
Tipperary	5	Waterford	14
Wexford	15	Cork City	7
Cork North	0	Cork West	5
Kerry	10	Limerick	9
Clare	10	Galway	5
Mayo	5	Roscommon/Longford	0