115 new gardaí attested early to take up positions in Dublin
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Some 115 new gardaí are taking up positions in Dublin this weekend as an internal review of the riots of November 23 is due to be completed next week.
The 115 were among 151 recruits who were attested on Friday at the Garda Training College in Templemore.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said an “operational debrief” of the garda response to the riots in Dublin city centre three weeks ago will be finished next week.
He said: “There are a lot of lessons already to draw from that. We have seen that in terms of the equipment we have asked for and the additional protective equipment that we have issued in terms of vehicles, shields, our tactics, the incapacitant spray.” Commissioner Harris said that there are currently 60 detectives working on the investigation arising out of the riot.
He said: “We are now at the point where we are breaking down that evening into various different incidents and then investigating the most serious incidents first and that is towards the identification of individuals from CCTV. That is a manual task.” He added that the process will then move to arresting and charging further people in connection with the incidents.
He said that facial recognition technology would be an effective evidence-gathering tool for gardaí, adding that it would have provided “literally thousands of hours of video and audio” to gardaí from Dublin city centre from November 23.
He added: “We want to be the same as every other European police service in that regard.”
The recruits who were attested on Friday will return to the Garda Training College in January to finish off a further two weeks of training. They were attested a month earlier than scheduled to ensure extra gardaí on the beat in the run-up to Christmas.
The south and northwest will each receive eight of the recruits, while 20 are being allocated to the east of the country.
Exit interviews are now being carried out with gardaí leaving the force, as 160 have resigned so far this year.
It compares to 109 for all of last year, 94 in 2021 and 70 in 2020.
A further 306 officers have also retired this year.
348 recruits are currently in training at the Garda College. A fresh intake will commence training in the coming weeks while a new recruitment campaign will begin on January 15.
An Garda Síochána says exact numbers are yet to be confirmed for the December intake, which will begin training on December 27.