An Garda Síochána needs to start recruiting from immigrant groups to reflect the country's growing ethnic diversity.
This policy should be pursued so the force can carry out proper community policing, chief inspector of the Garda Inspectorate, Kathleen O'Toole has said.
Ms O'Toole said it was important for An Garda Síochána to have as broadly-based a recruitment strategy as possible. Moreover she cited the example of the PSNI in Northern Ireland as a police force which has risen to the challenge of becoming more reflective of the community.
A former member of the Patten commission on policing in Northern Ireland and a former police commissioner of Boston, Ms O'Toole said that she was aware that senior officers in An Garda Síochána recognise the need to recruit from immigrant communities.
"A police force needs to reflect the community that it serves in every respect and that's true whether it's Boston or Belfast or Dublin or Waterford," Ms O'Toole told a conference at Waterford Institute of Technology entitled Policing in a Multi-Cultural Society.
"When I came into the police service in Boston in the 1970s there were very few women - it's now 16 per cent . . . and that's very important."
Ms O'Toole said that it took a longer period to achieve a greater racial mix in the Boston Police Force but energetic recruitment programmes helped attract people with a wider variety of languages which helped create a more effective police force.
"We had immigrants in Boston from countries who came from environments that had no trust in the police and we had to break down those barriers and build their trust and then go into community and recruit," she said.
Ms O'Toole said moves were already afoot in Ireland to make it easier for new immigrants to join the force such as the dropping of the requirement to be able to speak Irish, but it is likely to take some time before significant numbers from other backgrounds join.
"There's no question about it - it takes time to get a critical mass of outsiders into a police organisation. It took time in the US . . . [ but] we can come up with strategies that will accelerate that diversity to the greatest extent possible."
Ms O'Toole revealed that the Garda Inspectorate will be presenting a report to Minister for Justice Michael McDowell next week following a review of the Barr tribunal recommendations on the Garda handling of the Abbeylara shooting.
She also revealed the inspectorate had compared them to best international practice on siege situations such as Abbeylara.
