The Garda Trainee competition is run in two halves. publicjobs does Stage 1 (online tests, questionnaire and written exercise) and Stage 2 (interview and role play on Zoom); An Garda Síochána does Stage 3 (physical, medical, vetting) and the Garda College. The 2026 competition closed on 3 June 2026 and Stage 2 interviews began in August, running monthly. This guide is about Stage 2: what the five competencies mean, how the role play works, where the board’s questions come from, and what tends to go wrong.
What Stage 2 is, officially
The booklet says: “Candidates who are successful at Stage 1 will be invited to complete an interview and roleplay, carried out remotely via Zoom”, that publicjobs may add or amend assessments, and that candidates should read every communication sent to their application centre before each stage. It also says, in bold, that neither publicjobs nor An Garda Síochána endorse any preparation course. Marks per competency and the pass mark are not published; publicjobs’ practice elsewhere is a qualifying mark on each competency and an order of merit, and Garda candidates are told their placing and forwarded to AGS in batches.
Scale matters here. The 2024 competition attracted almost 7,000 applications and forwarded 1,333 names; in 2025 publicjobs invited 3,000 candidates to interview and ran up to 23 boards a day. The interview is competitive, not a formality after the tests.
The five competencies
| Competency | Descriptor, in summary |
|---|---|
| Interpersonal Skills and Service Ethos | Motivated to serve the public; helpful; engages positively and builds relationships with respect and sensitivity to others’ needs; listens, understands a range of perspectives, and responds with appropriate language and actions. |
| Exercising Authority | Willing and able to take a clear and credible lead; has the self-assurance to make rapid, well-judged and potentially unpopular decisions, execute them and stand by them. |
| Conscientiousness | Operates diligently, honourably and proactively; gets work done to the required standard; professional and persistent; motivated to do the right thing and to see tasks through despite adversity. |
| Resilience | Copes with a demanding workload; deals calmly and objectively with difficult situations, crises and trauma; wants to keep learning and seeks and accepts feedback. |
| Using Information and Problem Solving | Assimilates and evaluates information from a range of sources to support good decisions and generate solutions that meet the needs of the situation or the wider objective. |
The booklet’s job preview self-assessment is the best guide to what each competency means in Garda terms. It asks whether you could tell a parent their child has been killed, enforce legislation you personally disagree with, arrest someone you know to be fundamentally decent but who has broken the law, keep your composure when severely provoked, stay resilient under negative coverage and unfair criticism, carry out an arrest in public while being filmed on phones, and go on the beat alone. Every one of those maps to a competency, and the board is asking, through your examples, whether you have done anything like it yet.
Where the questions come from
Mostly from you. Candidates complete an interview form before Stage 2 with examples under the competencies, and former board members are consistent that the interview “largely focuses on the content in your Interview Form”. The board asks for “specific examples from your work experience, education, voluntary activities, or other relevant areas” and probes: what exactly did you do, what did the other person do, how did it end, what would you do differently. So the two preparation tasks are to know your form word for word and to have a second example for each competency, because a good board exhausts the form in the first twenty minutes.
Examples do not need to be dramatic. Dealing with a drunk customer at closing time, standing up to a manager who asked you to falsify a record, telling a teammate something they did not want to hear, staying calm when a patient or a child was in crisis, going back to a task after failing it, all count. The board is marking behaviour, not job titles.
The role play
You are briefed as a newly attested Garda and given a short written scenario and a few minutes to prepare notes. A board member then plays the other person, and will push: interrupt, get louder, cry, refuse, ask you to let it go this once. The role play runs up to about five minutes. What is being scored is the competencies in action: service ethos (do you treat the person with respect and listen), exercising authority (do you take control and make a decision), resilience (do you stay calm under provocation), problem solving (do you find out what is going on before acting), conscientiousness (do you do the right thing rather than the easy thing). Nobody expects you to cite legislation.
Patterns that score: introduce yourself, establish what has happened before deciding anything, keep your voice level, name what you can and cannot do, give the person a clear next step, and end the encounter. Patterns that lose: arguing, apologising for the rules, promising outcomes you cannot deliver, going silent under pressure, or giving in to be liked.
The interview questions
- Tell us about yourself and why you want to join An Garda Síochána now.
- Why serve the public as a Garda rather than in any other job, and what in your life so far shows the motivation is real?
- Give an example of a time you took charge of a situation when others would not.
- Tell us about a time you had to deal with someone who was aggressive or very upset.
- Describe a time you did the right thing when it would have been easier not to.
- Tell us about a time you were criticised. What did you do with it?
- Give an example of gathering information from several sources before making a decision.
- What have you read in the Code of Ethics that surprised you?
- What will you find hardest about the job, and how do you know?
After Stage 2
Successful candidates’ details go to An Garda Síochána for the Physical Competence Test, medical and vetting; a conditional offer can issue pending full vetting, and you do not attest until vetting is complete. Foundation Training then runs in three phases: 36 weeks at the Garda College in Templemore to attestation, then 36 and 34 weeks at a training station, leading to the BA in Applied Policing, followed by a further 34 weeks of probation. The interview board is, in effect, deciding whether to invest that in you.
The Prison Officer competition uses the same Zoom interview and role play shape with six competencies and a December 2026 interview window; the Recruit Prison Officer guide covers it.