Call for full-time immigration officers in all districts

PAEDOPHILES, sex attackers and serious criminals from other countries are slipping unnoticed into parts of rural Ireland, because there aren’t enough full-time Garda immigration officers to keep track of them.

That’s according to the Garda Representative Association (GRA), which wants full-time immigration officers stationed in every Garda district.

GRA central executive committee member Pat O’Sullivan said that, while legislation was created in 2001 obliging foreign paedophiles to notify the authorities of their presence here, many simply ignore it and, in a number of cases, they have also assumed false identities.

Garda O’Sullivan, who is stationed in Ballyvourney, Co Cork, said legislation should also be introduced which would allow gardaí to hold people they suspect of being convicted serious criminals until their identities and criminal records can be substantiated in their country of origin. He said that, in his own Garda division of Cork West, there was just one part-time Garda immigration officer and the picture was similar in other rural divisions around the country.

Garda O’Sullivan said there should be four or five full-time immigration officers in such divisions. They could collate information with each other so that serious criminals could be monitored wherever they moved around the country.

Meanwhile at the second day of the annual GRA conference in Co Carlow, the organisation’s outgoing president, John Egan, called on Garda management to ensure that members of the force weren’t put at risk by sending them out to night calls on their own in a patrol car.

Garda Egan said that this was totally against all proper Health and Safety procedures and he feared that, if not altered, it could result in the death of a garda. He said the situation was more acute in rural 24-hour Garda stations.

John Parker, a GRA central executive committee member based in Mallow, said that back-up was always close at hand in the big cities if something went wrong. “But in my district we could be 20 miles away from help. How is one garda on his own going to tackle three burglars, arrest them and bring back to the station in a car,” Garda Parker asked.

He added that in a lot of rural areas the current Garda radio system didn’t function properly, making it extremely difficult to call for back-up. He and Garda Egan said they had raised the issue with the head of the Garda Inspectorate, Kathleen O’Toole, and were hopeful she would support the move.