Garda spent more than €3.6m on advertising and public relations over past two years

Ken Foxe

An Garda Síochána has spent more than €3.65 million on advertising, public relations, and communications over the past two years.

Much of the spending took place as part of an ongoing recruitment drive to bring the number of gardaí in the State to at least 15,000.

Figures show the media agency Spark Foundry was paid €755,000 last year and €682,000 in 2023 for their work with An Garda.

This covered the cost of a garda recruitment campaign, which included production of a TV advert, public notices, and other work to attract new recruits.

Separately, payments totalling €1.459 million was paid to Mediavest Limited – which is part of the Spark Group – according to data released under FOI.

An Garda also listed payments of more than €664,000 to publicjobs, which runs recruitment campaigns on behalf of State bodies.

There were smaller five-figure bills with a range of other firms including Bell Media, Comhar, Eolas and Staffline Recruitment.

An Garda said they paid a total of around €30,000 to the Communications Clinic, the well-known public relations firm.

This was for media training of garda personnel who have to appear in the public domain or do interviews with newspapers, radio or TV.

The data showed that the advertising and communications bill for 2023 was €1.34 million.

However, that rose sharply last year by more than 60 per cent to a sum of €2.26 million, the figures showed.

The Government has set a minimum target of 15,000 gardaí but Commissioner Drew Harris has said that he believes 18,000 sworn members are needed.

The latest available data shows however, there are around 14,100 currently serving gardaí around 150 of whom are on secondment, career breaks or family leave.

In the latest round of garda recruitment, which closed in February, there were 6,700 new applications for the force.

Around one third of the applicants were female, 42 per cent of them were aged over 30, and 23 per cent stated an ethnic background other than white Irish.