The Minister for Justice yesterday presented a €330 million plan to recruit up to 2,000 extra gardaí to the force. Carol Coulter and Conor Lally report.
Mr McDowell's plan involves taking on around 1,100 recruits per year over the next three years. However, over the same period it is expected the force will lose 1,350 members through retirement.
The plan also involves the expansion of the Garda Training College at Templemore, Co Tipperary, but cost details for this element of the plan were not given yesterday.
It also involves the out-sourcing of in-service Garda training to make room for the new recruits, and examining the entrance criteria, including the age limit and the Irish-language requirement, to expand the pool of potential recruits. Mr McDowell said this was aimed particularly at members of ethnic minorities.
The Minister said the Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, was studying deployment levels all over the State and would decide where the new members should be posted.
However, he said around 400 new recruits "and maybe more" would be assigned to traffic duties in an effort to cut climbing road deaths.
Drugs units nationwide, as well as community policing schemes and juvenile diversion projects, also needed more personnel.
The remaining officers would be deployed in the urban communities that needed them most, particularly the new "super suburbs" in Dublin.
Taking into account retirements from the Garda Síochána in the next three years, the net gain would be in the region of 2,000 personnel, said the Minister.
"One thing I can promise. The additional gardaí will not be put on administrative duties," Mr McDowell said. "They will be put directly into front-line, operational, high-visibility policing. They will have an impact."
A new four-storey block would be built at Templemore to provide the extra lecture rooms needed for the new recruits. It is anticipated that some trainees would sleep away from the Templemore campus during their two-year training period.
Mr McDowell said building new accommodation would be pointless because it would not be needed in three years, when numbers would return to normal.
New recruits would spend 16 weeks, rather than the traditional four, in Garda stations during their training.
While it will cost €330 million to hire, train and equip the extra 2,000 recruits, maintaining them on the payroll once they were qualified would cost around €124 million a year at today's prices.
Some 1,096 trainees would be taken in next year and in 2006 and 2007, falling back to 661 by 2008.
The plan was greeted with scepticism by Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, yesterday. While he welcomed the promised increase, he doubted the target of 14,000 would be met in the lifetime of the Government.
The Labour Party spokesman, Mr Joe Costello, questioned if completing a new four-storey building at Templemore was achievable in time.