Diversity in An Garda Síochána 2023

Overview

This report is a new publication, produced by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in collaboration with An Garda Síochána (AGS) as a pilot project under the Statistics Act, 1993, to provide insights into diversity in AGS.

Data Sources

Garda Employee Management Systems (GEMS)

Data has been provided by AGS from the GEMS dataset to the CSO for the purposes of this report. GEMS is a list of employment records from AGS from January 2023. A minimised extract of the GEMS with details relating to sex, age, region, division, grade etc. are included in the GEMS data for data analysis, names or addresses of personnel were not included in extract. Data were extracted from GEMS on 07/02/2023 and were correct at the time.  

Census of Population Analysis (COPA)

The COPA is a pseudonymised copy of the Census of Population 2016 dataset held internally within the CSO for analysis purposes. It contains Census attribute information for individuals and households of which 95% of records have a PIK which allows them to be linked to pseudonymised administrative data sources to create new analysis. 

Central Records System (CRS)

The CRS is located in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP). It holds data on their customers, including identifying data such as address, relationships, claims, PPS contributions, earnings, employments and employers. It is a central repository of all the personal data on individuals held on different systems in the DEASP.

Methodology

Data is pseudonymised prior to any statistical analysis taking place. Pseudonymisation is a procedure by which identifying fields (i.e. identifiers, dates of birth) within a data record are replaced by one or more Protected Identifier Keys (PIK) to protect the privacy of individuals.

PIKs are used to link administrative data. A PIK is an encrypted or protected version of an identifier key such as the PPSN that enables CSO to link data across sources and over time without revealing any identification details to the statisticians undertaking any linking and analysis.

We complete a data match of GEMS data to COPA 2016 data using PIKs. The characteristics of both the matched and unmatched population are checked and compared. For unmatched PIKs from GEMS, we check age, division and grade distributions to ensure consistency and representativeness with the matched employee population. We carried out a further data match to CRS Data for additional information and checks. For example, for employees where nationality was 'not stated' in the data.

For those employees where the answer was ‘not stated’ to any of the diversity related Census questions, we gross up the values in a representative way to the other categories in that variable. This is carried out for 'Ethnicity' and 'Religion' in the statistical tables.

Employees are split by organisational structure for further analysis: Level 1 and Level 2, see 'Data' chapter.

Statistical Disclosure Controls (SDC)

We apply SDC to the final set of tables in order to protect employees being identified in the data, see first footnote in statistical tables.

We combine AGS divisions together where there are a small number of employees as an additional SDC procedure, i.e., where there is less than 5 employees in a cell of where employees less than 5 in a row could be identified.

Match Rates

In the GEMS dataset, there was a total of 17,889 employees.

Matched Employees

We were able to successfully match 16,735 (93.5%) employees to the COPA 2016 dataset by data linking using the PIK.

For nationality, we carry out a further match to CRS using PIK to find any employee nationalities that are 'not stated' in COPA.

Not Matched Employees

Some 1,154 (6.5%) employees were not matched to the COPA file. For these employees, we carried out a data match to the Department of Social Protection’s CRS data to run further checks on the distribution of this population. 

Age, nationality and organisational structure distributions are similar between matched and unmatched employees.

Definitions (AGS)

Organisational Structure in AGS

- Level 1

- Level 2

Definitions (Census 2016)

Disability

Data on disability was derived from answers to questions 16 and 17 of the Census questionnaire.  Question 16 was a seven-part question that asked about the existence of the following long lasting conditions: (a) blindness or a serious vision impairment, (b) deafness or a severe hearing impairment, (c) a difficulty with basic physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying, (d) an intellectual disability (e) a difficulty with learning, remembering or concentrating, (f) a psychological or emotional condition and (g) a difficulty with pain, breathing or any other chronic illness or condition. If a person answered YES to any of the parts of Q16, they were then asked to answer Question 17. This question was a four-part question that asked whether an individual had a difficulty doing any of the following activities: (a) dressing, bathing or getting around inside the home (self-care disability); (b) going outside the home alone to shop or visit a doctor’s surgery (going outside the home disability); (c) working at a job or business or attending school or college (employment disability) and (d) participating in other activities, such as leisure or using transport. Individuals were classified as having a disability if they answered YES to any part of the above two questions, including, in particular, if they ticked YES to any of the parts of Q17 even though they may not have ticked YES to any of the parts of Q16. The formats of these questions were updated in 2011 in consultation with users and interested groups.

Definitions of ethnicity, nationality and religion are based on the 2016 Census form.