Earlier this year, 30-year-old Luke Staines left An Garda Síochána just one day after he completed his probationary period.
The reason was "the complete inefficiency of all the systems" he worked with, he says, which leaves the force's ability to investigate crime "below par".
"I was a proud member of An Garda Síochána. I loved it. I loved patrolling. I loved going on the beat," he says.
"I was just getting frustrated generally with the resources that we had, not only the [lack of] actual members themselves, but the cars, the computers, the functionality and the software."
Luke is just one of an unprecedented number of gardaí who have quit their jobs in recent times.
So far this year, 71 members of the force have left, according to the Department of Justice.
Last year, it was 108, up from 41 in 2017. Along with rising retirement levels, it means the attrition rate of the force has almost doubled in five years.
Added to this is falling recruitment. It all puts the number of available gardaí at 13,668 members, down 600 members since 2020. That’s well short of the Government target of 15,000.
As the great-grandson of the first Garda Commissioner, Michael Staines, Luke was asked by An Garda Síochána in 2022 to feature in publicity for events to mark the centenary of the force.
At the time, he was happy to do so.
"I feel like it speaks volumes, [that] in the space of a year I could have such a changed view on how the organisation is, and how it's run."
Luke is now working as project manager for a construction company.
Thriving in his new role, he is still disappointed that his garda career did not work out.
With such a family history, he always wanted to be a member of the force but upon joining he found he couldn’t serve the public as he wanted.
Watch: Luke Staines speaks about his decision to leave the Gardaí
At one of the stations where he was based for a period, the number of rank-and-file gardaí in his unit halved. As a result, he says, it often meant that only one car was in operation when two were needed to be effective.
"If you go to a robbery in a shop, one car can go get the details, send them over the radio 'Okay, he's wearing this, he went this way.’ And another car can immediately go to it. Instead, with one car it was just us getting the bare bones information and running to the car and rushing to try find this guy."
He says other basic tools of investigation could be lacking. In one case, he discovered it was not possible to view CCTV footage on the computers at one station. He had obtained CCTV footage of a cyclist who got hit by a motorbike but found there was no computer which could read the disk.
When he sought help, Luke says he was told to "forget about it".
In addition, he felt he was often at a desk for long periods doing what he says was excessive administration, when he could have been out policing in the community.
He says he spent endless hours inputting information to the incidents and operations database, PULSE, including bogus calls.
"Half the day would feel like it was wasted basically on admin."
One of his greatest bugbears, however, was the low morale at rank-and-file level, something highlighted by the Garda Representative Association (GRA). It has led to a recent "no confidence" motion on the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
The result, which is widely seen as a foregone conclusion in favour of the vote, is due in mid-September.
Luke says the low morale came from a culture of fear and discipline from the top.
"I think when you're in an organisation that is so stubborn and so just stuck, what happens then is, that all higher-ranking members because they know they can't make any positive change and they're looking for, we'll say, a promotion to get up to the next step. All they can do is use discipline as a KPI [Key Performance Indicator] to show, look, well, this is how many people I've disciplined."
One former member for whom the low morale of the force contributed to her decision to leave is Laura Young.
After 14 years on the job, the increasing stress of her working environment, left her feeling that she had no choice but to leave.
Laura’s last role was in the Garda Command and Control Centre, dispatching officers to incidents.
She says the role as a dispatcher was very stressful because the demand for help hugely outweighed the resources available to respond.
"The resources versus calls or volume of calls that were holding was completely disconnected," she says.
"There could be 100 plus calls holding at any given time."
Watch: Laura Young on the impact of her career on her mental health
Laura had originally jumped at the chance to become a dispatcher, believing it would be less stressful than her prior role, after a decade on patrol regularly responding to tragic and traumatic incidents.
"As a police person, you're probably going to see something a bit messed up maybe once every week or once every two weeks, and something extremely messed up every couple of months," she told Prime Time.
One incident that really got to her, and made her reassess her career, was the aftermath of a death near train tracks.
"As it was the middle of the night and we were to attend and pick up body parts and put them into a body bag. I remember two members having to leave. They just couldn't cope. But I remember walking along and thinking, ‘this is part of the job.’"
Although she got help from her doctor after this incident, she never felt like she fully recovered from it and it was "pivotal moment" in her former career.
After this, she moved to the Command and Control Centre, where she says she finally experienced "burn out".
"I remember sitting at my desk one day and suddenly my heart started to race. My palms were sweaty, and I could hear my voice cracking on the radio while communicating with the garda car."
Although the gardaí have a support system after trauma, whereby you get a call from a welfare officer, Laura did not think to rely on it. She says its "still taboo" within the organisation to take up such support.
"There's still a stigma associated with that. I think mandatory counselling would be incredible."
After, she began not getting out of bed on her days off and dreaded work, until her GP prescribed her antidepressants.
"Having to be medicated to go to your job is not normal, just to cope with your job stress."
It was her dad, who was hugely proud of her work as a garda, who finally pushed her to leave.
"My dad is a very pragmatic man, who really sees the value in a State job, a pensionable job, even he was like, ‘you need to leave that job.’"
So, two years ago she did. Laura now works with an animal welfare charity.
Another former member of the force who recently quit also spoke to Prime Time.
Paul Comerford is now working as an investigator for a State agency, after spending 15 years as a guard.
After a long successful career Paul left two years ago, over a disciplinary matter relating to an off-duty incident that was later dismissed. But he says, he was unlikely to have stayed the course anyway.
His overwhelming feeling was that it was time to get out, because of low staff numbers and the lack of work-life balance.
"Your weekend was a Monday and a Tuesday. You didn't see it because you're so exhausted, you don't even go out those days."
Getting days off was always a struggle, Paul says, a sergeant would push back because of its impact on operations.
"He goes, ‘if I give you the day off, we can't put a patrol car out because I haven't got enough people to cover. I have to ground a car, or I can't take prisoners in.’"
Paul says low staffing had an impact on even the most important decisions.
Watch: Paul Comerford on why he decided to leave the guards
"You're kind of weighing up stuff that you probably shouldn't have to take into account, ‘if I arrest this person, it could be a case of we have to ground the patrol car for the night because the observer has to be taken out of the patrol car to look after the prisoner in the prison section.’"
At a time of high tension between well-armed drugs gangs, his job included the protection of individuals at their homes. He says he and his colleagues often felt like "sitting ducks" for violent criminals.
"Totally unarmed, two of us in a patrol car sitting outside the front of a house on 12-hour shifts."
When he asked what they should do if confronted by a gunman, the answer he says was, "run and hide behind a wall".
Like Luke Staines, Paul Comerford says frontline gardaí do a very good job in often very difficult circumstances, but their operational capacity is hampered by outmoded internal systems.
"We had to log our patrols, but we had to do it twice," he says, describing a requirement that members log patrols with Command and Control and on PULSE.
"So, we could do 20 patrols that night. And you have to put 20 incidents on [both systems]."
This, he said, had a direct impact on operations.
"We're having to pull [the patrol] maybe 2 hours early because we have to generate the statistics to be able to show the chief on the Wednesday morning."
Paul Comerford says he got worn down by the inefficiencies and how it affected his ability to prevent or respond to crimes.
To input reports onto PULSE, officers must contact staff at a call centre over the phone.
"If it's a busy night, there's a lot going on in the country, there's just constant incidents having to be put on and constant phone calls. You could be 45 minutes [waiting], if you could get through at all."
"If you want visibility, you have to free up the people who can be visible. There's no point in chaining them to administrative processes, where it doesn't even look like any of it is joined up."
Paul says extending the retirement age of gardaí is not going to change dwindling staff numbers. While still relatively young, he says he couldn’t have stayed the course.
He found the physical side of the job started to get to him. After experiencing so many assaults, he no longer felt as "indestructible" as he did as a younger man.
One day his daughter spotted bruising up his back and side and asked him about it.
He tried to explain it away. He says he just couldn’t tell her "the horror" of what had really happened to him.
"As you get older, you start to think to yourself that maybe there's easier ways of paying the mortgage."
'Blue Flight' a Prime Time report on Garda staffing is broadcast on Thursday 24 August at 9.35pm on RTÉ One.
If you have been affected by issues raised in this piece, assistance can be found at rte.ie/helplines
