The Minister spoke earlier about the ongoing work to build stronger and safer communities and his plans to recruit extra gardaí and increase the number of gardaí, which are very welcome. The visible presence of gardaí in uniform on our streets is very important for our communities. Many men and women would like to serve in the Garda Reserve. Can the Minister tell me when recruitment will begin with respect to the Garda Reserve?

I fully agree that the Garda Reserve has an important role to play in supplementing Garda visibility in our communities. We want to get to at least 15,000 gardaí and we want to grow those numbers even further. The benefit of having another layer of people who can support communities is clear for all to see. The first priority was to open the new garda recruitment campaign. Almost 5,000 people said they would like to be a garda. We are going through that process now and it is my intention that later this year, probably towards the end of the year, we will open a new recruitment campaign for the Garda Reserve.