Ireland now has over 1,000 fewer gardaí than planned for due to Covid-19 and its consequent effect on recruitment, the Policing Authority has said.
Outlining the problem in its 2022 Assessment of Policing Performance, the Authority described the effect on resources as “profound”.
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“Policing is not immune from the pandemic’s enduring influence,” its chairman, Bob Collins, wrote in the report published on Friday. “The fact that the number of available Gardaí is not what it was hoped it would be is one of those areas where Covid’s influence is very clearly evident.”
An Garda Síochána had anticipated the number of new trainees admitted to the Garda College in 2020, 2021 and 2022 would be 2,120.
With Covid-19 leading to a closure of the training facility and then restricting attendees, however, the number of trainees over that three year period reached just 775.
“This was something of an achievement in itself but it represented a shortfall of 1,345,” the report noted. “Naturally, the output of the college fell as a result with 1,040 new Gardaí being attested in the same period, a shortfall of approximately a thousand.” The Authority excepts “considerable challenges” in attempting to recover this .
While there has been a rise of 50 per cent in non-attested staff at the organisation to over 3,000, the Garda Reserve also dropped to a low of 375 last year.
The Authority, an independent body established to oversee policing performance in Ireland, said it remains “somewhat uncertain” as to the long-term strategic objectives for the reserve force.
“The sharp reduction in the numbers of Reserve members give rise to concern. This concern is also reflected in the reported experiences of some Reserve members.”
Its latest biannual review of the force focused considerably on resourcing issues, which it said have impeded objectives set out by the organisation. Community policing, responding to economic crime and enabling the ongoing policing reform programme are all affected.
It noted that, at the half year review point in 2022, performance regarding the An Garda Síochána’s Policing Plan “was a cause for concern” with only 15 of 34 targets on track.
In other policing areas, the Authority acknowledged gardai’s important role in balancing the right of people to hold protests with the safeguarding of the rights of refugees and migrants who have been subject to protest activity.
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Mr Collins said this was sometimes done “in the face of outright hostility from a minority”.
There was a continued focus in 2022 on improving services for victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. Investigators also had increased capacity to analyse seized IT devices to assist in the investigation of all crimes, particularly in response to offences involving child sex abuse.
“The rate of reporting continues to increase in respect of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence (DSGBV) with considerable medium-term rises in both domestic abuse and coercive control cases,” the report noted.
Given a “considerable difficulty” in achieving court outcomes in such cases, however, the Authority acknowledged the expansion of a pilot programme designed to record the outcomes of sexual offences, offering greater understanding to gardaí as to why between 70 and 80 per cent of cases do not achieve a detection.
In dealing with complex cases, the Authority outlined its ongoing concern in relation to the capacity of officers to meet demands in responding to mental health crises.
“Gardaí are not trained as mental health responders but they are consistently being put under extreme pressure and challenge to respond to mental health related incidents, often in the absence of medical professionals,” the report noted.
“This is not a tenable situation and places the members involved, as well as the person experiencing such a crisis, in a position of risk.”
Gardaí and the HSE are currently analysing such risk through a Community Access Support Teams pilot in the Limerick division where a specialist uniform unit works with health professionals to provide a rapid, integrated response in such cases.
Mr Collins also referenced “significant inroads into the world of organised crime gangs” and the report pointed to a significant decrease in murders and threat-to-life incidents in the years following the events at the Regency Hotel in 2016.
“2022 was characterised by landmark successes for the An Garda Síochána in the combating of groups such as the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, Black Axe and others,” it said.
