{"id":45022,"date":"2025-09-05T09:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45022\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T09:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:37:11","slug":"garda-recruitment-sees-rise-in-black-and-asian-applicants-as-white-irish-share-falls-to-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45022\/","title":{"rendered":"Garda recruitment sees rise in black and Asian applicants as \u2018white Irish\u2019 share falls to 70%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The percentage of people applying to be a garda who are \u201cwhite Irish\u201d has dropped from 88% in 2019 to 70% in 2025, figures show.<\/p>\n<p>In the same period, the percentage of applicants describing themselves as \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cAsian\u201d has increased from 2% to 7.2%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">An additional category, capturing \u201cother including mixed\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Recently retired garda commissioner  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/arid-41692026.html\">Drew Harris<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Public Appointments Service provided the  Irish Examiner with a breakdown of ethnic group\/background for the February competition, adding that it was not mandatory to answer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Of the 6,784 applicants, 535 (8%) declined to answer. Of those that did:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"listbullet\">\n<li>&#8220;White Irish&#8221; applications have dropped from 88% of the total in 2019, to 77% in 2022, to 73% in 2024, and to 70% in 2025;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Other white&#8221; applications have gone from 6.9% in 2019, to 5.4% in 2022, to 13% in 2024, and to 11% in 2025;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Asian\/Asian Irish&#8221; figures have gone from 1.4% in 2019, to 3.5% in 2022, to 4.9% in 2024, and to 4.8% in 2025;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Black\/Black Irish&#8221; applications have gone from 0.6% in 2019, to 1.4% in 2022, to 2% in 2024, and to 2.4% in 2025;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Other including mixed&#8221; figures are 1.5% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2025 [not recorded before 2024];<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;White Irish Traveller&#8221; statistics have gone from 0.3% in 2019, to 0.4% in 2022, to 0.4% in 2024, and to 0.4% in 2025.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"\">Commenting on the figures, Garda HQ said: \u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na welcomes the increase in applicants from diverse communities to garda recruitment campaigns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cEncouraging people from those communities to join An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu caption\">&#8216;Building a safer Ireland&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">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 garda\u00ed were born outside the State in countries such as Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Romania.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The CEO of Limerick migrant charity Doras, John Lannon, said: \u201cRecruiting more people from ethnic minority backgrounds into An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na is not just about representation, it\u2019s about building a safer, fairer, and more cohesive Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWhen our garda\u00ed 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He added: \u201cWhen the diversity of our society is reflected across all our front-line services, it helps challenge harmful anti-immigrant narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The percentage of people applying to be a garda who are \u201cwhite Irish\u201d has dropped from 88% in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,11167,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-45022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-gardai","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}