Martin Kenny
Question:3. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Justice the steps his Department is taking in relation to the current Garda retention crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7530/23]
View answerThursday, 16 February 2023
Questions (3)
Oral answers (13 contributions)
Before I go to the question, I welcome Ellie Fay from Finglas, who is a student, to the Public Gallery. Many of our Oireachtas members bring students in here from time to time and it is always a very worthy and worthwhile thing to do. The future is bright when we have bright, dedicated and focused young people in our community.
Back to business. What steps does the Minister intend to take to deal with the current retention crisis in An Garda Síochána? It has become a continuous problem in recent years but particularly acute recently. Many members of the force are staying for a short time and then moving on and going off to other employment. This is causing a great crisis because we also have the crisis in recruitment and coupled together the two issues are causing serious problems.
I join with the Deputy in welcoming his guest, Ellie, to the Public Gallery.
I assure the Deputy that the Government is committed to building stronger, safer communities across Ireland and key to that is ensuring that An Garda Síochána has the resources it needs. This is reflected in what has been a significant allocation of over €2.14 billion under budget 2023. There are currently just over 14,000 sworn members of An Garda Síochána and a little over 100 gardaí, 109 to be precise, resigned last year. While there has been a very slight increase in this figure in recent years, the rate of resignations represents 0.7% of Garda members and needs to be viewed in that context. We are talking about a figure of less than 1% in terms of resignations from an organisation in a year.
The Deputy may be interested to know some information I think may be important for context at a time when we are encouraging people to join An Garda Síochána and we all want to see more gardaí on the beat and in our specialist units.
It is important to note that the 2022 Garda Síochána culture audit, which was conducted independently of the Garda by the University of Durham, found that job satisfaction is high among gardaí, that they are motivated to serve their communities and that they have pride in the organisation. The significant levels of interest shown in every recruitment campaign is testament to the enduring appeal of a career in An Garda Síochána, notwithstanding the hugely challenging job gardaí do. Huge levels of public support for the Garda were demonstrated in communities up and down the country throughout last year’s centenary celebrations. Again and again since my appointment as Minister, members of the public have attested to their very positive engagement with gardaí, often at times of great personal difficulty. Having said that, we all recognise that policing is difficult, challenging and sometimes very risky work. The Commissioner is also deeply conscious of the daily risks and injuries to his colleagues. A total of 89 gardaí have made the ultimate sacrifice and many more have suffered significant life-altering injuries in the course of their duties. We are immensely grateful to our gardaí for their outstanding dedication and commitment to serving the public and for the vital role they play in keeping people safe.
As the Deputy will appreciate, people may choose to leave an organisation or change careers for a variety of reasons. I believe the relatively low number of resignations from An Garda Síochána must also be seen in the context of the overall state of our economy, with full employment, a highly competitive jobs market and the changing perception of a job for life.
We are all conscious of that and we all want to pay tribute to the work members of An Garda Síochána do on a daily basis. A lot of this is down to that stress. I spoke to members of the service who told me that sometimes a call comes when there is an incident somewhere and they know there is going to be if not danger then certainly stress involved in that incident. They know they need at least four or maybe five people to attend but there are only two of them. When the two attend that incident they are often attacked, abused or insulted. They feel vulnerable. It has an immense impact on the morale of the service when engaging and dealing with situations like that. It is very similar to the situation in the Minister's former role as Minister for Health. Nurses in our hospitals all tell us that when there are supposed to be four nurses on a ward and there are only one or two, it puts stress on them that they are not able to cope with. It is a similar situation with the Garda. The average across Ireland at the moment is about 270 gardaí per 100,000 of population. Across the European Union, that should be 330 per 100,000. We have a job to do in order to get that up to the standard it needs to be at.
The best way we can keep our gardaí safe is to pass laws in this House that help ensure they have the legal powers to keep them safe. When they take criminals off the street there should be adequate sentencing in place and we should give them the technology and resources they require. Front-line gardaí are asking us to provide them with body cameras to keep them safe. They have been asking for a long time and we need to get on and heed their request. I know the Deputy and I agree on this matter.
To be very clear, the other best way to help keep our gardaí safe, and keep them in the force, is by giving them more colleagues and increasing Garda numbers. Our aim and the aim of the Garda Commissioner are unified with regard to having at least 15,000 gardaí and at least 4,000 Garda staff, or a total workforce of 19,000 people. That is where we want to get to. We will help get there by freeing up people from back office duties into front-line policing because of civilianisation. Since 2015, over 880 Garda members have been freed up from back office desk jobs and have gone back into front-line policing. I again refer to the Garda culture audit from 2022 because that is direct feedback from front-line gardaí on how they view their jobs and the organisation.
I appreciate that. I understand that many gardaí get great job satisfaction from what they do and work very hard in respect of that. I always wonder about having more civilian staff that are going to free up gardaí for front-line duties. The experience in communities does not show that. That is the problem here. There was a similar story when Garda stations were closed. Many Garda stations were closed across the country and here in the city of Dublin. We were told that would free up gardaí to be out in the community so there would be more community gardaí on the street meeting people and doing their jobs out there. That did not happen. It was the reverse that happened. When we say we are going to do something because it will have a particular outcome and that outcome does not happen, there must be a reassessment of why that is the case and what can be done to change that.
The experience of the public is that they are not getting the service they require. We had the 999 scandal and all these things, which reflect a difficulty that people depend on members of the Garda, as a service, to keep them safe but when they contact that service, they do not get the response they require because the service is not up to standard. That is no reflection of the hardworking people within that service; it is a reflection of the resources that have been put in place for them.
The Deputy is right. We should always follow data and check that we get what we want. To take a point in time, since 2015 over 880 Garda members who were doing back office duties - I am not suggesting that is unimportant but they were not able to do front-line duties - have been freed up to do front-line duties. That is 880 more gardaí. Taking the global picture from 2015 to now, there are 12% more gardaí, or an increase of 12%-----
Not per capita. It is lower per capita.
There are more gardaí now than there were in 2015. We went through a global pandemic in that time which saw our Garda college close on a number of occasions.
This year 150 gardaí-----
Deputy, please.
I will get to Deputy Tóibín's question in a moment. I have to deal with one Deputy at a time here. Interest in joining the Garda is high and strong. We see that every time we run a Garda recruitment campaign. We will get 1,000 new gardaí into Templemore this year, which will be the largest intake in a long time. We will get to over 15,000 gardaí in the country. That is the shared view of myself, the Commissioner and the Government. I will listen very carefully to front-line gardaí and representative bodies on this. I will be meeting this month with both the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, and the Garda Representative Association, GRA.
Will the Minister consider looking at the training allowance?
We will work with the AGSI and the GRA to give them the tools and resources and to hear their concerns.