769. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Justice if a new recruitment campaign for persons to apply to join An Garda Síochána will be launched before the end of this year. [44840/24]

As the Deputy will be aware, the Garda Commissioner is responsible for the management and administration of Garda business, including the recruitment and training of Garda members and staff, under Section 26 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005 (as amended). As Minister I have no role in the Garda recruitment process and decisions related to the timing of Garda recruitment campaigns fall under the Commissioner's remit.

The Commissioner has indicated that annual recruitment campaigns for Garda members will be held and the next campaign is due to be launched in Q1, 2025.

To assist with recruitment, I have taken a number of actions with colleagues in Government over the past number of months including an increase to the training allowance for Garda recruits to €354. This represents an increase of over 92% in the last 12 months.   I have also increased the age of entry from 35 to 50.

The most recent Garda recruitment campaign, which ran during January and February this year, received a very strong response with over 6,300 people applying to become a Garda. This is a significant increase on the 5,000 people who applied last year. It is good to see that so many people want to join An Garda Síochána with a strong response from people aged between 35 and 50. Over a third of the applications were in that age group.

An Garda Síochána continues to work on the mitigation of various resourcing challenges and I have established a Garda Recruitment Training Capacity Group to consider further measures to assist in reaching our current target of 15,000 sworn members.

I can also assure the Deputy that I am committed to building stronger, safer communities – and strengthening An Garda Síochána is at the core of that. The Government is determined that An Garda Síochána grows to 15,000 members and beyond. We are also committed to increasing the number of Garda staff to 4,000 and the Garda Reserve to 1,000 by the end of 2026 and to 2,000 thereafter.

I have provided record levels of funding to the Garda Vote, including €2.48 billion under Budget 2025 which is an increase of over half a billion euro compared to 2020. This funding is supporting ongoing recruitment of Garda members and staff.