Garda caps being thrown high into the air on Friday marked the arrival of a new cohort of gardaí into the force.
A group of 193 graduates, of varying ages and backgrounds, stood proud in the courtyard of the Templemore training college, ready to be posted across the country.
Among them was Simon O’Driscoll (30), from Dublin. As a child he acted alongside Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell and Brenda Fricker in the film about murdered journalist Veronica Guerin.
O’Driscoll played Guerin’s son, Cathal, but it was not an insight gleaned from the film into the illegal drug trade that pushed him towards a career in An Garda Síochána.
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“I had family in the job and saw how much they loved it,” he said, adding that their positive experiences was a guiding factor in his decision to join up. He also wanted a job that “has a bit more meaning on a day-to-day basis”.
O’Driscoll also appeared in New Boy, the Oscar-nominated film based on a short story by Roddy Doyle, and for a number of years on soap opera Fair City.
He will be going back to the capital as a garda and is set to be stationed at Kevin Street station. “I expect to be busy, that’s for sure, but that is what I want.”
Donegal native Ciara Kearns (42) is bound for Letterkenny Garda station now she has graduated. Kearns said “it takes a village” to train a garda and part of that village was her mother, who looked after her teenage son while she was in training.
“He’s well proud,” she said.
Kearns has a “diverse” background, having worked in psychology and athletics, and hopes she can bring those qualifications to some day work in the Divisional Protective Services Units (DPSUs), which deal with crimes against vulnerable victims.
She has represented Ireland in athletics, first as a juvenile, and most recently won a gold medal in the long jump at the European Masters Championships in 2022.
Katelynn Doran (26) has played for the Leinster Women’s Rugby team and laughed when asked if that background might help her to tackle crime.
“It made me physically tough,” she said of her sporting life. “The bond you have with a team would be the very same as with your unit.”
Doran studied law at Maynooth University before completing a master’s degree in criminology, while playing for Leinster on the side.
A good garda, she said, is someone who is open-minded and “the friendly face” that people can approach on the street.
The cohort of 134 men and 59 women attested at the ceremony will be assigned to Garda divisions across the country, with the majority, 141, headed to the Dublin metropolitan region.
Their training lasted 36 weeks, with 24 of these spent in Templemore itself and 12 on placement. Last year, more than 600 gardaí attested, and a new cohort of more than 200 trainees is set to enter the college next week.
More than 11,100 people applied to join the Garda during two recruitment campaigns run last year, the force said.
The probationers will face “difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous incidents”, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said during his speech at the ceremony.
But rank-and-file officers find one of the biggest threats on the job comes via the internet, through harassment and threats, and the Minister pledged that those responsible would be investigated.
“Everywhere you go, someone will have a camera and the capacity to broadcast their engagement with you,” he said, a reminder of the challenges of the job of policing “a world that is changing at a rapid pace”.
