Issue Date: 14th June 2023
An Garda Síochána has become the first public service organisation to compile complete figures on the diversity of its workforce across a range of demographic characteristics.
The compilation and publication of such analysis, which was conducted by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), is a commitment under Action 16 of Our Public Service 2020 – the Government’s public service reform plan.
It was also a key commitment in An Garda Síochána’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy.
This collaboration with the CSO places An Garda Síochána in the ‘leading’ category (organisations which have a sophisticated understanding of their diversity profile) of the Action 16 Vision Statement data maturity model.
The aim of Action 16 is to promote equality, diversity and inclusion in public sector bodies. As part of this, it states that public sector organisations should be able to objectively measure the diversity of their workforce.
Under the plan, the Garda Commissioner is the co-sponsor of Action 16 along with the Secretary General of the Department of Justice.
Speaking today, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said, ""This valuable analysis will for the first time give us definitive data that will help us in our goal to be a more diverse organisation.
"An Garda Síochána is committed to increasing the diversity of its workforce so that we fully reflect the society we serve. As this report shows, we have made good progress in gender diversity and, to a much lesser extent, in disability diversity.
"For example, our level of female police officers is above the European average, and more than half of our senior leadership team are women.
"However, as I have spoken about previously, we fully recognise that we have a lot more work to do to increase our diversity.
"During our recent recruitment campaign, for instance, we put a lot of time and effort into encouraging people from minority communities to consider a career in policing. An Garda Síochána wants people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to join us as it will strengthen the service we provide to the public.”
According to the analysis, 36% of the Garda workforce are females. It also found that 98% of personnel are ‘white Irish’. Around 96% of Garda employees are below 60 years of age. In terms of disability diversity, the analysis showed that approximately 10 per cent of Garda employees in back-office based bureaus such as ICT and Finance had a disability. When front-line operational units were included in this, the analysis showed that four per cent of all Garda employees had a disability.
Under its EDI Strategy, An Garda Síochána has introduced measures such an intern scheme to give people from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to experience working in An Garda Síochána, and an amended uniform policy to take account of religious and ethnic requirements.
These results will provide a baseline for An Garda Síochána to assess changes in the workforce over time and also comparison with other police services internationally.
Equally importantly, Sara Parsons, Principal Officer in the Garda Síochána Analysis Service, noted, "This project has successfully proved the potential to anonymously link Garda data with other administrative datasets. We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with the CSO to deliver the report that encapsulates the principal of collecting data once and using it many times across the public sector. The approach provides the insight we need to assess our diversity, without the need for the disclosure of sensitive personal information by any Garda personnel”.
Under this project, An Garda Síochána provided limited anonymised personnel data (no names) to the CSO who then matched the information with its records (Census and other CSO datasets) to produce a data summary of the diversity of the organisation, while all the time ensuring that no individual was identifiable. This methodology can be generally applied across the whole public service.
The CSO analysis is available here
