Not since a group of young gardaí were sacked for fighting for improved pay in 1961 have tensions between members of the force and their political masters been so pronounced.

Not since a group of young gardaí were sacked for fighting for improved pay in 1961 have tensions between members of the force and their political masters been so pronounced.

GARDA militancy has a long pedigree with the force’s industrial activists tracing their ancestry back to a meeting in the Macushla Ballroom in south Dublin on November 4, 1961.

THE Department of Justice was given responsibility for the Garda Síochána to leave the gardaí free to do the policing while the civil servants assumed the administrative responsibility for matters such as accounting for the force.