The strength of the Garda force is about to reach record levels, despite claims for years from the Garda Representative Association (GRA) that resignations and retirements are at crisis levels, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has said.
He has also dismissed suggestions the expected all-time peak in Garda numbers, from 14,500 at present to 15,000 in the coming months, will prove very brief and will be almost immediately followed by a surge in age-related retirements that could continue for about a decade.
During that period, according to the Garda’s own projections, the number of gardaí who will reach compulsory retirement age in any one year is set to increase 10-fold.
The GRA, which represents more than 11,000 rank and file gardaí, said while there was provision made in the budget for recruiting up to 1,000 additional gardaí next year, in the first nine months of this year some 400 members had retired or resigned. But O’Callaghan has insisted recruitment is far ahead of retirements or resignations.
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“The number of resignations from An Garda Síochána is extraordinarily low, if you look at the PSNI, or any of the police forces in the UK,” O’Callaghan said in a budget event in Dublin on Thursday, insisting that, despite claims to the contrary, the Garda force does not have a resignations problem.
“(Garda resignations) are at about 1 per cent, 140 resignations a year. And, talking to the Garda Commissioner, he tells me that many people who resign come back, and they can be fast-tracked back in.”
He added Garda recruitment was “going well”, with classes of 200 or more now passing out regularly at the Garda College, Templemore, Co Tipperary, and he hoped there could be five such passing out ceremonies per year.
“It’s a great job and a lot of people now realise they want to do a job that doesn’t involve sending and receiving emails all day. And if you become a garda, you’re not doing that,” he said.
[ Garda retirements set to surge in ‘ticking time-bomb’, projections showOpens in new window ]
O’Callaghan added retirements from the Garda were “inevitable”. However, he regularly approved extensions of service for members who had reached 62 years, the compulsory age of retirement, but had applied for special permission to continue working for an extra one or two years.
GRA general secretary Ronan Slevin said successive governments had made the same budget promises to increase the Garda by 1,000 members the following year, with minimal impact.
“We presented the Government with a six-point plan suggesting how we could solve a recruitment and retention crisis but have been ignored,” he said.
“We are now on the eve of national pay talks and we still haven’t been told if we will even be in the room when our financial futures are being shaped.
“As of this week, almost 400 gardaí have left the job in 2026 through resignations and retirements, and this number will only get higher by the end of the year.
“The sheer lack of direct engagement by Minister Chambers and his department with the elected members of the GRA has been, for us, disappointing, disingenuous and almost disrespectful.”
The retirement age for Garda members was last year increased from 60 to 62. This had the effect of postponing the start of a projected decade-long retirement spike.
[ Some gardaí working until age 64 for the first time in history of forceOpens in new window ]
For example, the latest projections by Garda Headquarters show that next year and the year after, the number of Garda members who will reach compulsory retirement age is 37 and 49. However, that is then set to increase every year, for the next decade and will reach 373 by 2035, a ten-fold increase.
Furthermore, the retirement spike will probably start sooner, and worsen more quickly than Garda Headquarters’ projections. This is because the projections are based on all Garda members continuing to work until they are aged 62 years.
In reality, many serving members have a full pension once they reach 30 years service and can retire at any point after they reach the age of 50 years.
