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

Not to mention the ever increasing bureacracy associated with policing causing many guards to be indoors doing paperwork - particularly at night time as during the day many supervisors and managers expect the guards to be out when clearly it should be something built into their rosters. Senior management don't understand that however as the burden of paper in their time was not even a fraction of what it is now.

An incident that happened this week that resulted in a death had a response time of 90 mins for ASU,

Having loads of resources to respond to something in D1 is nice if your in D1 but not so much outside of Dublin,

Its incompetent management and poor planning, as well as political interference in policing such as McEntee dictating who should and should not be recruited biased on their ethnic make up for political reasons.

Access to non lethal defensive tools (beanbag rounds or tazers ) in every 24 hour district would solve the problems. But training and equipment is considered too expensive when balanced against the effect on Gardai and provision of a less effective service to the public.

IMO I think you're right about a taser being safer than a baton - but there needs to be more legislation to back the garda using it. At the minute a guard appears to be guilty until proven innocent; particularly in the court of mainstream and (unfortunately) social media.

The criminal justice system survived being out of date for as long as it has as imo many in the system taped over the cracks to keep things going. What used to be a quiet word from a guard to someone's parents for their children misbehaving or arresting someone simply for their own safety until they've recovered from being too drunk is now a full investigation in each case with written authorisation and direction sought from management with, in many cases, prosecutions for same which have since ground the entire system to a halt - nevermind the lack of prison spaces which has been an issue since even before the boom.

The whole system, from the top down; from the Department of Justice, the Judiciary, the Prison Service, Social Services and AGS needs to be reviewed and overhauled but like everything talk is cheap and sadly you won't see that kind of commitment.

In 1997 Bertie Ahern promised a three strike system and recently Minister McEntee has considered bringing people under 25 into the juvenile diversion programme. Why didn't the first happen? Because it costs too much. Why is the second being considered? Because it's far cheaper to keep repeat offenders out of the courts system and allow them to continue being a menace to the public at large.

Anyway../rant over.

On topic I think that recruitment is great but they need to cover those who are retiring/resigning in addition to bolstering the numbers. Once we don't have a repeat of the crash where the numbers dropped from 14,500 to 12,400; and keep the trend going upwards.

Judges don't review paperwork on cases.

What the poster said.

Can’t believe you don’t know this stuff

ASU are uniform and they carry multiple Firearms , Its not a legal issue its a substandard management one , fixed with the stroke of a pen but they fear it would lay badly in the media. peoples safety and quality of service manipulated for the sake of politics

A new recruitment drive for An Garda Síochána has launched today (thejournal.ie)

Look at the name of the thread ,

Remember when there was a huge push to recruit females into front line policing in the 2000s ? at the expense of qualified males, and then of course they failed to realize that many of these females would be out for long periods on maternity to come back on restricted hours and accommodated in office jobs letting burden fall on the lads. The ineffective members stayed in the figures but rarey if ever filled a car or walked a beat. I have no issue what so ever with encouraging any one to join as long as it makes sense and as long as they are present and work rather than just used for a media sound bite

And before you attack me for criticizing females or some such Im simply pointing out the reality of front line policing that you dont seem aware of.