Look to Wales to solve our garda numbers problem

Discussion about garda numbers is never related to international comparisons.

Take Wales with 3m people, and only 7,370 police between their four regional forces.

We now have 4.5m people, which, by Welsh standards, should give us only 11,055 police, and not the 13,000 which is the current target level, much less the actual current level of 13,400. There is one very simple and key reason behind this — we still employ very few civilians to support the gardaí, and as a result, very many skilled, trained experienced sworn officers are paid to be desk-bound pen-pushers.