Government Approval Received For New Garda Reserve Recruitment Campaign.

• Recruitment campaign expected to be launched soon.
• Revised Regulations provide for more efficient training and more effective deployment of Garda Reserves.
• Target of at least 1,000 Garda Reserve members by 2026.

The Minister for Justice, Mrs Helen McEntee TD, has today received Cabinet approval for updated regulations on recruitment, training and deployment of the Garda Reserve.
She has committed to launching a recruitment campaign as soon as possible and has set a target of 1,000 Garda Reserves by 2026, to further support Garda members nationwide.

The Garda Reserve is a voluntary body drawn from the community to assist An Garda Síochána with local patrols and crime reduction initiatives, policing major incidents and events, and providing operational support to regular Garda members on the basis of the reserve member’s skills or local knowledge.

Welcoming the approval by Cabinet, Mrs McEntee said: “Joining the Garda Reserve is an excellent way to give back to your community, to help make it safer, and to get experience of and an insight into working with An Garda Síochána if that is your longer term career ambition.
The new Regulations provide for a more modern approach, particularly in relation to training. The Garda Commissioner will be in a position to recruit new members of the Garda Reserve and a recruitment campaign is planned for the very near future. It will target a broad and inclusive range of candidates, in keeping with the Reserve’s role as a visible form of community engagement.
It is a priority for me to ensure An Garda Síochána has all of the support it needs to provide the world-class police service we have all come to expect. Building up the Garda Reserve to at least 1,000 members by 2026 to ensure it can meet its full potential is part of that mission”.

Notable changes in the new Regulations include:

• Additional flexibility for training components that ensure new Reserves are trained efficiently and to a high standard enabling Reserve members to have the skills to take up active duty more readily.
• Changes to enable more effective deployment of Garda Reserve members.
• Updates to Reserve members’ hours on duty – Currently, the maximum hours a Garda Reserve member can be requested to work is 208 hours in any 12-month period. Under the new Regulations, Reserves can make themselves available for more hours, should they choose to do so.
• Updated and modernised educational requirements to reflect changes that were introduced to the Leaving Certificate grading system in recent years.

The work of a Garda Reserve is varied and interesting, for example:

• Working along-side the Garda Road Traffic Unit.
• Ensuring public safety during State visits by foreign dignitaries.
• Assisting in public order incidents and in some cases assisting in prosecutions.
• Assisting with crowd control at events such as concerts, sporting events etc.
• Assisting with the regular day-to-day work of An Garda Síochána.