{"id":428323,"date":"2026-05-02T07:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/428323\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T07:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:26:11","slug":"irelands-population-is-up-by-a-million-since-2006-so-why-have-garda-numbers-barely-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/428323\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s population is up by a million since 2006, so why have garda numbers barely changed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\u2018Serious questions\u2019 about plans to add 5,000 extra officers\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777706771_22_video.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The population of Ireland is one million more than in 2006 &#8211; so why have our garda numbers barely changed?<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The country was \u201ccoming down with crime\u201d when a moratorium on garda recruitment was introduced in the aftermath of the financial crash. In April 2009, then Labour leader Pat Rabbitte told the D\u00e1il that it was \u201can unbelievable crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cThe country is in mayhem. If the government had not made such a mess of the economy, this would be at the top of the agenda,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Serious questions\u2019 about plans to add 5,000 extra officers The population of Ireland is one million more than&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,158,9691,61,60,18573,15552,43,3415],"class_list":["post-428323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-coronavirus","tag-department-of-justice","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-ocallaghan","tag-maeve-mctaggart","tag-news","tag-sinn-fein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}