More than 11,000 people have applied to become a garda in 2025, the force said, adding that the recruitment campaign "maintained the trend of increased diversity of applicants".
Figures show that 40% of applicants were aged 30 or over, while almost a third were women.
An Garda Síochána said 30% of gardaí are female, which is higher than average for European police services. 32% of this year's applicants are women.
It added that 23% of applicants described themselves as not being "white Irish".
"This included 'Asian' (5%), ‘black’ (2%), ‘any other white - apart from white Irish’ (13%), and ‘other including mixed’ (3%). Approximately 7% preferred not to say or left this field blank," gardaí said in a statement.
The total number of people who described themselves as "white Irish" was 70%.
That is a drop from 2019, when 88% of garda applicants described themselves as being "white Irish".
This year’s recruitment campaign - conducted by the Public Appointments Service - saw 11,118 people apply to become new gardaí.
Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said the level of interest among people in becoming a garda meant there was "strong pipeline" of trainees to grow the force in the coming years.
"This number of applicants so soon after our last competition in February demonstrates there is a lot of interest in making a difference to communities by becoming a garda.
"We can offer a varied career where no day is the same. It is not an easy job, but it is a job worth doing," he said.
At the end of last month, there were 14,325 gardaí with another 564 in training.
Earlier this month, a working group set up to consider how to increase garda recruitment found that the Garda College does not have the capacity to train 1,000 new gardaí every year.
The Government set itself the target of recruiting 5,000 new gardaí over its five year term.
However, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said the target of 1,000 new gardaí is "achievable but challenging", and that capacity is not currently at 1,000 new gardaí.
"What we are in at the moment is that we can take in approximately 800 to 900 in Templemore in terms of each intake, so we want to try and get that capacity up to 1,000," he said.
