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An Garda Síochána

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 February 2022

Thursday, 17 February 2022

Questions (88)

Michael Creed

Question:

88. Deputy Michael Creed asked the Minister for Justice her plans for Garda recruitment in 2022; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8723/22]

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Oral answers (4 contributions)

The most important resource available to An Garda Síochána is the human resource, the men and women who are gardaí and the civilian staff employed by An Garda Síochána. We can have many conversations about squad cars and IT systems, which are important, but without the human resource, the security that citizens feel in the communities that are adequately policed will be lost. Will the Minister give an update on the progress, under the programme for Government commitments, to bring gardaí numbers to 15,000, with the total number employed to 21,000? Much progress has been made, but I ask the Minister to provide us with an update.

At a time when we celebrate the centenary of service by the members and staff of An Garda Síochána, I am pleased to say that the Government is in a position to continue to increase the number of gardaí on our streets. A sign of that was seen last week with the new recruitment competition that was launched by An Garda Síochána through the Public Appointments Service.

Budget 2022 includes an unprecedented allocation, in excess of €2 billion, to An Garda Síochána. As I said earlier, this is an increase of one third on funding provided in 2015. It specifically includes provision for the recruitment of up to 800 gardaí and 400 Garda staff this year. Many of the 800 gardaí to be recruited will be drawn from this competition. I am pleased to note that there has already been great interest from the public, with 3,425 applications received last Thursday and Friday alone. I anticipate those numbers will increase. It is important to note that for the first time there has been a significant increase in the number of women, members of new Irish communities and people from minority groups who applied compared to the last competition and that is very welcome. Communities need to see members of their own community representing them in An Garda Síochána.

I welcome the Commissioner's leadership in emphasizing the need for greater diversity in the ranks of the service and in its behaviours and support structures. An Garda Síochána must reflect all the communities it serves and embed the principle of human rights as the foundation and purpose of policing in Ireland. This has included changes to Garda uniform policy, as we saw recently, the establishment of the Garda national diversity forum, and representation from diverse and minority communities in the Garda Reserve. In the coming months, the Commissioner will set out his plan for Garda Reserve recruitment for this year.

An Garda Síochána is working to produce a combined internal and external equality, diversity and integration strategy early this year. There is a huge amount of work being done to focus on how we can increase Garda numbers, as well as how we can increase diversity and ensure the gardaí are reflective of the communities they represent. I wish to stress that the recruitment competition is open until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 16 March 2022, and details are available on www.publicjobs.ie, so as to encourage even more members of the public to put their names forward.

That is quite reassuring. Members of the House are anxious that the areas we represent will receive their proportionate share of any new recruits in order to improve the visibility of gardaí on the ground.

I wish to trespass into the area of Garda management, because I know the Minister regularly engages with the Garda Commissioner and senior management. One of the issues about which most of us as public representatives receive representation from individual gardaí is transfers. There are gardaí from west Cork or west Kerry who are positioned in Dublin and want to get back to their county. This may be due to family reasons, circumstances changing, elderly parents, gardaí getting married or a spouse working in the country while a garda is working in Dublin. There is greater scope for more efficient manpower management within An Garda Síochána and I would like Garda management to be aware of that. There needs to be greater flexibility.

They have fewer ties but as they advance in years, marry and settle down, there are more ties to home. I appreciate that members of the Garda cannot be appointed in their home patch but perhaps they could be deployed somewhere proximate to where their families are or where their spouse might be working. They are all issues that should be taken on board.

As the Deputy rightly said, where gardaí are deployed to or how they might be redeployed is a matter for the Commissioner but also for gardaí locally within the divisions and districts. From my own experience, while a member of An Garda Síochána starting out is sent further from home, as time goes on and as families evolve, where there are requests there is generally an appetite and a response to try to accommodate as many people as possible. Even in recent times through Covid-19 and in response to requests to have a more family-friendly model, there has been a change to the structures and rosters specifically responding to some of those issues and concerns. It has been received very well by many of the members of An Garda Síochána. It allows greater time at home and greater flexibility. All of these things need to be continually kept under review and responded to. I am very happy to take the Deputy's comments back to the Garda Commissioner.

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