Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has said he cannot provide a timeline for when 1,000 additional gardaí will be deployed to Dublin city centre.
However, he pointed to existing high-visibility policing in the city which he said has delivered both confidence and a greater sense of safety for people, reports RTE.
The Dublin City Taskforce recommended the deployment of 1,000 extra gardaí to bolster security in the city centre back in 2024.
The taskforce was established in May of last year to develop a plan to revitalise the capital in the aftermath of the November 2023 riots and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, reports RTE.
Mr O’Callaghan said the Government remained committed to implementing the recommendations set out in the taskforce’s report, but noted that those gardaí need to be recruited first and that other parts of the country also need to be adequately resourced.
The Minister was responding to Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman, who said the deployment of 1,000 additional gardaí to Dublin city centre had been identified as the minimum requirement to restore a genuine sense of security in the capital, reports RTE.
“That number wasn’t pulled out of thin air. 1,000 extra gardaí was seen as the minimum number required to meet European average policing standards for a city of this size,” he said.
Mr O’Gorman said the net increase in gardaí across Dublin city centre districts stood at just 40 in the year and a half since the report was published, and suggested the current pace of progress would not see the target reached until around 2063, reports RTE.
“I want to see an extra 1,000 gardaí in Dublin. You were in Government as well, you know that things don’t happen with the click of a finger or overnight,” Minister O’Callaghan told Deputy O’Gorman, reports RTE.
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