Percentage of 'white Irish' garda applicants drops to 70% in 2025
Some 154 new recruits graduated at the Garda College in Templemore in August. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA
The percentage of people applying to be a garda who are “white Irish” has dropped from 88% in 2019 to 70% in 2025, figures show.
In the same period, the percentage of applicants describing themselves as “black” or “Asian” has increased from 2% to 7.2%.
An additional category, capturing “other including mixed” ethnicities has nearly doubled in the last year alone, accounting for 1.5% of applicants in 2024 and 2.9% in 2025. This category was not recorded before.
There were a total of 6,784 applications in the most recent garda recruitment competition, which ran last February. Another competition is due this month.
Recently retired garda commissioner Drew Harris has said that another competition was needed to ensure a good supply of candidates to meet government plans to hire, on average, 1,000 recruits every year between 2025 and 2029.
The Public Appointments Service provided the with a breakdown of ethnic group/background for the February competition, adding that it was not mandatory to answer.
Of the 6,784 applicants, 535 (8%) declined to answer. Of those that did:
- "White Irish" applications have dropped from 88% of the total in 2019, to 77% in 2022, to 73% in 2024, and to 70% in 2025;
- "Other white" applications have gone from 6.9% in 2019, to 5.4% in 2022, to 13% in 2024, and to 11% in 2025;
- "Asian/Asian Irish" figures have gone from 1.4% in 2019, to 3.5% in 2022, to 4.9% in 2024, and to 4.8% in 2025;
- "Black/Black Irish" applications have gone from 0.6% in 2019, to 1.4% in 2022, to 2% in 2024, and to 2.4% in 2025;
- "Other including mixed" figures are 1.5% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2025 [not recorded before 2024];
- "White Irish Traveller" statistics have gone from 0.3% in 2019, to 0.4% in 2022, to 0.4% in 2024, and to 0.4% in 2025.
Commenting on the figures, Garda HQ said: “An Garda Síochána welcomes the increase in applicants from diverse communities to garda recruitment campaigns.
“Encouraging people from those communities to join An Garda Síochána has been a key focus of recent recruitment campaigns as we seek to be more representative of the communities we serve. It will also be a key feature of the upcoming recruitment campaign to be launched later this month.”
The statement said the organisation was starting to see the benefits and that, in the last graduation on August, some 26 (17%) of the 154 new gardaí were born outside the State in countries such as Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Romania.
The CEO of Limerick migrant charity Doras, John Lannon, said: “Recruiting more people from ethnic minority backgrounds into An Garda Síochána is not just about representation, it’s about building a safer, fairer, and more cohesive Ireland.
“When our gardaí reflect the communities they serve, everyone benefits. It can increase the sense of belonging and trust among minority communities who feel represented in a more diverse police force.”
He added: “When the diversity of our society is reflected across all our front-line services, it helps challenge harmful anti-immigrant narratives.”
