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Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Cork East Fine Gael TD, David Stanton has
welcomed the accelerated Garda recruitment campaign, which was launched today by the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald.

“I would encourage people to consider applying to join An Garda Siochána. This new recruitment campaign will continue the ongoing accelerated recruitment to fulfil the Government’s commitment to increase the strength of An Garda Síochána to 15,000 members.

“This new campaign reflects the Government’s commitment to seamless ongoing recruitment to An Garda Síochána, to ensure that our force has the capacity to provide visible, responsive and effective policing to every community throughout the country.

“Taking account of projected retirements, reaching a strength of 15,000 will require some 3,200 new Garda members to be recruited on a phased basis over the next four years. That is in addition to the 1,200 that will have been recruited by the end of this year, since the reopening of the Garda College in September 2014.

Minister Stanton noted that so far 534 recruits have been fully trained as members of An Garda Síochána and are on the ground in communities nationwide with another 150 recruits due to graduate later this year.

“It is essential that that An Garda Síochána has the capacity to train larger numbers of new recruits without reducing the quality of its training programme. Of equal importance is that appropriate supervision and support are provided to newly qualified Gardaí to ensure that victims and the public are well served. I welcome the detailed planning process that the Commissioner and her team have in place to ensure the delivery of increased numbers of Gardaí without any compromise on the quality of those recruited or the training programme.

“I encourage anyone who is interested in joining An Garda Síochána to visit the website of the Public Appointments Service and submit their application at www.publicjobs.ie by the closing date of Thursday, 29 September 2016

“Fine Gael is committed to supporting communities across Ireland and I am committed to ensuring that the support is felt here in my constituency of Cork East. We are working to ensure that the economic recovery reaches all parts of the country and the benefits are felt by all.”