UP TO 100 trainees are to be recruited in the first Garda enrolment since the imposition of the jobs embargo.
Earlier this year, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern indicated that a recruitment campaign would be necessary in 2010.
He said yesterday that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had given approval for the recruitment. The first Garda trainees are expected near the end of the year.
Mr Ahern was in Luxembourg, to attend a meeting of EU ministers for justice ministers.
“This campaign will establish a panel of approved candidates who will be available for ongoing recruitment into the Garda college as trainees,” he said.
Garda Representative Association (GRA) general secretary PJ Stone said, however, there were already 300 people on a panel waiting to be called and “they probably would have been in training but for the embargo”.
Mr Stone said that if approval was given, those on the panel were ready to begin training on Tuesday morning because they had gone through the recruitment process before the embargo.
“If this recruitment is excluding those already on the panel it’s a step in the right direction. If it includes those on the panel, it is only stretching out even longer the waiting time for those people already on the panel.”
Mr Ahern said: “I’m reopening recruitment to keep numbers up to an all-time high at 14,500. We had a lot of retirees last year but we still kept the numbers quite high because we still had people in the system in the training centre. This year the number of retirees has dropped significantly.
“Trainees will subsequently be taken into the college as needed so that Garda strength is maintained at the approved level,” the Minister added.
At at the end of April, Garda numbers stood at 14,532. A further 229 students were in training.
In February this year, 170 gardaí were promoted including 120 to sergeant level, 28 to inspectors, 14 to superintendents and eight to chief superintendents.