Garda clerical plan ‘has become a shambles’

ONLY one-in-five of 500 gardaí doing clerical duties have been replaced by civilians since 2001, the Labour Party claimed yesterday.

The party’s leader Pat Rabbitte said the Garda Civilianisation Scheme was in disarray, and the transfer of gardaí from desk jobs to operational duties had not happened almost five years after it was announced.

According to Mr Rabbitte, almost 500 gardaí were to be freed for frontline duties and replaced by civilian clerical employees.

Mr Rabbitte said the most “ludicrous example” from 2001 was where the sweetshop at the garda training college was run by a garda instead of a shop keeper.

He accepted the idea behind the scheme was a good one, designed to save millions of euro in salaries.

“It would release qualified gardaí to work on operational matters,” he said.

But he said the process was thrown into uncertainty last month when an Equality Officer ruled in favour of civilians working in the force. They should, said the officer, be entitled to the same pay rates as members of the force if they were doing the same work.

“Minister (Michael) McDowell should have seen this coming,” he said.

“What had seemed an ambitious strategy has become a shambles.”

He continued: “By this stage hundreds of gardaí were supposed to have been freed up, but it seems Mr McDowell has been sitting on his hands.”

The Department of Justice has appealed the decision of the Equality Officer to the Labour Court. It accepted progress on civilianisation had been “constrained” but attributed this to the limit on the number of public service employees.

It was pointed out that 1,200 civilians are now working within An Garda Siochána and that number continued to increase.