Gardaí fear numbers will drop below 13,000
The Garda Representative Association, which represents the country’s 10,500 rank-and-file gardaí, say they fear Justice Minister Alan Shatter will not recruit enough gardaí this year to replace the 350 members about to retire.
GRA president John Parker said previous Garda commissioner Martin Callinan had stated that the force could not adequately function if it fell below 13,000 personnel.
He pointed out that there were nearly 2,000 fewer gardaí employed by the State now compared to 2009.
Mr Parker said Mr Shatter — who has not been invited to the GRA annual conference in Killarney — did not engage with any garda representative organisations and was “always dealing with us third-hand, through senior [department] officials”.
He said the force was so under-resourced it was like a car running on petrol fumes and that his members “were stretched to the limit”.
Mr Parker said frontline gardaí were regularly apologising for being late to incidents and this was entirely down to their huge workload and lack of resources.
He reiterated that GRA members had no confidence in Mr Shatter and the only way they would regain it was if he “started to resource us properly”.
The GRA also criticised “good news stories which weren’t good news stories”, with Mr Parker pointing to announcements that garda cars were being replaced. In reality, he said, not enough money is being spent to keep the garda fleet intact.
However, he said GRA members had confidence in interim Garda commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan and are hopeful she will get the job.
Mr Parker said he thought she “would be a uniting force and the organisation would unite behind her”. He added: “She knows the job and has come up through the ranks.”
Mr Parker described morale among rank-and-file members as being “fairly low at the moment”.
He said new rosters mean his members are having to work six 10-hour shifts in a row and are tired from trying to plug the gaps because of manpower cuts.
The GRA conference continues today, when one of the main topics up for discussion will be its often strained relationship with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.
Uniformed gardaí should be equipped with tasers, not just the elite armed Regional Support Units.
The GRA says at least one uniformed member on each unit should be trained and equipped to use the electrically-powered weapon. Frontline members of the force already have access to pepper-spray, but the taser is “even more effective”.
As reported in the Irish Examiner yesterday, frontline gardaí face increasingly vicious assaults.
GRA deputy general secretary John Healy said his organisation was looking at a new method of recording such incidents.
He said it is believed that around 1,000 gardaí were victims of assault while on duty last year. More than 200 of these were serious assaults.
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