There is much concern about the level of policing in our cities, towns and villages or the lack thereof. People feel intimidated by gangs of young people taking drugs and engaging in antisocial behaviour of all kinds. Indeed, in many cases people are afraid to walk down the main streets of their towns and villages. This is a pity. The lack of gardaí is staggering. We never had such a scarcity. I salute the work they do but there are not enough of them and they do not have the resources. The public feel we are not serious about dealing with this issue here. We get pious platitudes but people are being intimidated in many towns in County Tipperary and throughout the country. An Garda Síochána seems unable to deal with it. There is no willingness on the part of the Government to deal with it.

I assure the Deputy that this is an issue we are prioritising. We had a budget of €2 billion for An Garda Síochána last year. A significant amount of that went to increase Garda numbers. Templemore college has reopened. We have had three attestations this year already and from September and October we will have 200 gardaí coming out of Templemore every 12 weeks. This will significantly increase our numbers. We had a competition that yielded 11,000 applicants interested in joining An Garda Síochána.

Separately, the new operating model will mean, where we have a consolidation of various different types of work within An Garda Síochána such as human resources or finance, more gardaí who are in the system to go out on the beat on the front line. That will make a huge difference and will impact communities throughout the country as well as the significant increase in numbers.