McEntee launches Garda recruitment drive. Is this just lip service?

I see they still haven't scrapped the upper age limit of 35 despite the WRC judgement and the Policing Commission recommendation (not that I'd be applying anyway!).

Not just that, but with the variety of modern policing roles (cyber crime, white collar crime investigation etc), you'd really think that AGS would be trying to attract slightly older people with these skillsets into the force and not excluding them. It's not all vaulting over hedges chasing scaldies.

Unpopular woke soft-c*ck opinion: Violence in society can't be policed away. You can maybe catch it at the end of the funnel and clobber it over the head with a baton once it manifests (maybe), but it's best tackled by treating addiction as a health rather than a criminal issue, community focused policing rather than reactive Judge Dredd type policing, and a whole society effort to reduce economic exclusion.

Lastly, mental health services and interventions in this country need a serious reboot - I'd wager that if you went into Mountjoy with an army of clinical psychologists, the level of hitherto undetected mental health issues is probably off the charts and probably issues that could have been intervened and treated in childhood or early adulthood. Too late for them as they've already done damage to society and are doing porridge, but as a mental excericse, consider how many of them could have been prevented from reaching a place in their life where they needed to be taken out of circulation for however long.

For instance, last time I checked, countries with tough guy policing like the US and the gendarmerie in France still have significant violence and public order issues running through their society and have had for a long time.

Policing should be more visible and present in problem areas yes, but a RoboCop corps of police officers up and down the country isn't desireable or necessary, and you'll probably find it generates more problems than it solves if you got your wish.