Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-14
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

First, I want to pay tribute to An Garda Síochána for the work it did over the Christmas period. It carried out a dedicated road traffic enforcement operation throughout that period, with 10,000 checkpoints, as the Deputy said, statutory and mandatory intoxicant testing and regular high-visibility policing checkpoints. It made 765 arrests, seized nearly 3,000 vehicles for different offences under the Road Traffic Act and detected nearly 26,000 speeding offences. At the moment, as the Deputy said, there are some 638 gardaí assigned to roads policing. Recruitment is continuing apace and is accelerating, so additional garda numbers will become available to be deployed to priority areas. My view is that, over time, we will be in a position to assign more gardaí to roads policing units. Twenty-nine gardaí were assigned to the DMR roads policing unit last year. Last June, 26 gardaí were assigned to roads policing units in the eastern and north-western regions. Diaidh ar ndiaidh, mar a deir muid, beidh na huimhreacha ag méadú. We will increase the numbers.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-14