Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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80. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the number of times the Irish Consul General or Deputy Consul General based in New York have met formally with the Commissioner of the New York Police Department in the years of 2023 and to date in 2024, in tabular form. [26099/24]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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My Department, through the Consulate General in New York, frequently engages with the New York Police Department. While they have not had formal meetings with the NYPD Commissioner in 2023 or 2024, the Consul General and other colleagues in the Consulate General have met the Commissioner and Deputy NYPD Commissioners informally on a number of occasions, including at an Irish cultural event at the Irish Arts Center in June 2023, at this year's St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and at a John Jay College of Criminal Justice reception in March 2024.

More broadly, the Consulate General engages on a regular basis with the New York Police Department, both due to its importance as a major law enforcement agency in the United States and also given the longstanding Irish heritage links of generations of Irish and Irish Americans who served in the Police Department.

The Consulate General also engages regularly with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York as part of its Detective Garda Jerry McCabe Fellowship Programme, which facilitates the regular exchange of police officers from An Garda Síochána and from the New York area.