Gardaí forced to hire farm trailer to transport shoplifting suspect

A FARM trailer had to be hired by gardaí to transport a shoplifting suspect in Laois recently, it emerged yesterday.

Gardaí had to rely on the unusual form of transport to remove the suspect from the scene due the inadequacy of resources available to them according to Fine Gael.

Currently, there is no police van available to any of the garda stations in Co Laois and only one bulletproof vest available to 120 gardaí, Fine Gael Laois/Offaly candidate Charles Flanagan claimed yesterday.

In the most recent incident, a suspect had to be tied to a farm trailer hired by the gardaí and removed from the scene.

The shoplifting suspect had proved too tall for a normal garda car and there was no other vehicle available to gardaí, Mr Flanagan said.

He added that the incident had exemplified the “chronic and persistent under-resourcing” of gardaí by the Government over the last decade, adding that gardaí were constantly having to improvise on the job.

“Last year I highlighted the fact that gardaí in Portarlington had to take a taxi to get to a crime scene because no garda car was available,” he said.

The under-resourcing of garda was all the more remarkable given that Portlaoise is the headquarters of the Laois-Offaly Garda Division and home to two prisons, one of them the highest security facility in the country, Mr Flanagan added.

Last night, a spokesman for the Department of Justice said the garda budget now stands at €1.4 billion, an 11% increase on 2006 and a 96% increase since 1997 in real terms.

He said over 1,200 Garda vehicles were procured in 2006, renewing half of the entire Garda fleet in just one year.

Some 1,300 ballistic vests were recently procured and are being distributed to detective units. A further 300 are on order and distribution of 11,000 anti-stab vests will start this month.

A garda spokesman declined to comment other than to say that the matter is being investigated.