McEntee launches Garda recruitment drive. Is this just lip service?

For all the problems that China has, in 13 years living there, I never once felt afraid walking around (except in the countryside or outer suburbs), because there was a police van/office on every street corner, or within sight of two corners. 12 million people in the city I lived in, and violent crime was mostly a rarity. Still happened, but the police (even with the problems with corruption and crap) managed to keep the areas mostly safe. Far safer than what I've seen or heard of, since I returned home two years ago.) Whereas in the non-policed areas of China, things were more... dodgy, but still better than here.

There is a lot of value in maintaining a police presence on our streets, and roads. Seeing the police cruising around at night would help in a major way, even without having actual boots on the ground. TBH I'd be hard pressed to remember the last time I saw a Garda officer just walking around in the evening. Maybe that happens in Dublin, but... in my hometown of 21k people, it's rare.. very rare. I see them the odd time in Galway city, but not really that much either.

There is a chronic shortage of police presence on the streets of Irish towns, and cities...

However, more Police is not the answer, by itself. More Police, better sentencing, and actually keeping criminals in jail to properly serve their sentences would contribute the most towards resolving our problems,

the mass stabbing seems to be the Chinese equivalent of the high school shooter.. Pathetic adult male, stab attack on primary schools usually.

They had a few jihad mass casualty stab jihad attacks on railway stations a few years ago. The chinese state came down hard and they are over. I am sure France wishes it could act the same way

That's 800 being recruited this year.

how many are leaving? How many have joined over the last few years?

This will make no visible difference at all. In the years since the commissioner took over, there is the highest number of gardai ever but yet the lowest ever visible presence. There are no small local stations left in the country, no local guard living in the station house in the village. They have all been centralised into bigger centres, further away. There are hundreds of kilometres of the countryside that never see gardai, particularly at night time.

North inner city Dublin has no visible Garda presence, South inner city however is the opposite. How is that allowed to happen?

Of course there is.. But in terms of general public safety on the streets, it is a far safer environment than what is currently happening in Ireland. Oh, I'm well aware of how common domestic abuse or inter-couple violence that occurs, just as I know that school violence is a real problem that they've been forced to confront, but that's neither here nor there. China being a traditionally shame based culture is one of the interesting things about the culture, in that it's encouraged but many people resist living that way. The point was about having police around in an obvious way, and that it does improve things.

I don't feel safe on the streets of my hometown in the evenings or at night. I did in China. That's the difference that is important. Even in a city twice the population of Ireland, I felt safer there, than in a mid-sized town in Ireland of 20k people.

Athlone has improved hugely over when I was a teenager there, although that's not really the point. Last weekend a group of teenagers chased a man in his 30s through parts of the town, and beat the crap out of him. That wouldn't have happened if there were Gardai patrolling, and that it was reliable known element... but instead, it's rare that you see any Gardai on the streets, except around the cop shop itself.

And I didn't say "some bigger cities". I referred to China because they have a police presence almost everywhere in their cities... and it shows in how little crime happens around them. It was in relation to a point another poster made.

Gardai cannot assault people. They will find themselves in court pretty quickly if they did. You have a strange idea of law enforcement and the law in general.