Garda numbers‘close to critical level’

Interim garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan has issued a second warning about garda numbers — saying they were now "very close" to a critical level.

And she told an Oireachtas committee that a “rush to violence” among people, was driving the recent rise in homicides. Her comments on garda numbers follows a similar warning by her predecessor Martin Callinan, also made to an Oireachtas committee, in 2012.

Mr Callinan set a minimum floor of 13,000, but numbers reached 12,954 by the end of May and are thought to have dipped further since.