MCENTEE: GARDAI NEED TO RECRUIT BEYOND 15K MARK

THE Justice Minister has said the Government may continue to recruit beyond the planned 15,000 Garda manpower limit in the wake of a patrol car being rammed last week.

Helen McEntee was responding to a serving garda’s claim that there are not enough new recruits coming into the force, leaving massive shortages.

Joyriders ran amok in the Cherry Orchard area of Dublin in three stolen cars last Monday.

One of the stolen cars rammed a Garda patrol vehicle twice, with two female officers inside.

The Minister yesterday admitted there is “not enough gardai, full stop.”

She was speaking on Newstalk’s On The Record, where she responded to a text from a serving garda.

And she said: “You have absolutely wonderful people doing a wonderful job and my job is to make sure that we have more of those people in An Garda Siochana.

“There’s not enough gardai, full stop. I’ve never said that there is and I think we need to keep going even beyond the 15,000 target that I and others have very clearly said we want to get to.”

There are currently 14,318 officers in An Garda Siochana.

She added: “It’s about making sure the Gardaí have the resources that they need. I would suggest gardaí having body-worn cameras which we hope to have rolled out and piloted next year.

Bill

“[These] will be hugely helpful for garda protection as well as other types of ways in which it will help them solve crime, having CCTV and that rolled out more effectively, greater Garda powers which again I’ll have a bill enacted by the end of this year, greater legislation around scramblers — all of these types of things help and assist gardaí in their job.”

The two female gardai who were in the patrol car were assessed by medics and are now off duty due to their injuries.

Det Garda Mark Ferris added that both are doing well.