Falling garda numbers at crisis point, says GRA
Garda Representative Association central executive member, Michael Corcoran, has claimed there are around 130 fewer frontline gardaí patrolling the city and suburbs compared to 2008.
He said at present, around 530 rank-and-file gardaí are on duty in the Cork City Garda Division, and this figure includes the Glanmire area which was recently annexed from the Cork North Garda Division.
Mr Corcoran pointed out that new recruits haven’t even begun training and even if they started at Templemore today, it would be at least a year before any of them appeared on the streets of Cork.
Around 300 will be trained, but the fear is the majority will be sent to Dublin.
“Even if we got 20 of them, we would be doing well, but there is not a hope that we will even come close to what we really need,” he said.
Chief Superintendent Michael Finn told a meeting of the Cork City Joint Policing Committee earlier this week that 30 members of the force stationed in the city have retired during the past 18 months and hadn’t been replaced.
He said another 60 had amassed so much service they could now retire if they wanted to.
The chief superintendent said he’d love to be able to deploy a garda at every street corner, but at present the force would have to “work smarter” with reducing resources.
However, Mr Corcoran said the public and his own members were suffering because of the manpower cuts, which he sees getting worse.
“The job is getting harder, the workload bigger and the back-up isn’t there. The public are giving out to us because of the length of time it takes us to arrive at a call. We don’t have the resources to do the job as quickly as we’d like to.”
The GRA senior representative said the job was only being done because many frontline gardaí were catching up on paperwork in their own time and the pressure was leading to increased stress-related illness.
“If they gave us 100 gardaí tomorrow it might bring us back to the level we need. The crisis is already here and it will deepen if we don’t get the numbers.”
Meanwhile, Cllr Thomas Gould, who is a member of the joint policing committee, said to make matters worse, the Government recently announced a new leave of absence scheme where gardaí can take up to three years off work.
“As a result of restrictions on garda overtime, garda management are finding it more difficult to provide a service.”
Mr Gould said he had been contacted by some constituents who said they had been told there was “only one car on duty at that time,” or that “there was only so many staff available”.
“I’m calling on minister Alan Shatter to provide the gardaí with the resources and the manpower necessary to run a modern and efficient policing service.”
The attack by two juveniles on a homeless man on a Saturday afternoon in Cork City centre has prompted senior gardaí to put more patrols out during daylight.
The victim, who in his 30s, was kicked in the head at Winthrop St on March 22 in what was a unprovoked attack.
Superintendent Barry McPolin said the two alleged culprits had been interviewed and he expected a file would shortly be sent to the DPP.
However, he stressed such an act of violence was very unusual in that street, especially during the day.
In the last three years, there have been seven minor assaults recorded in Winthrop St, along with 36 public order offences and 36 drugs offences. On average, most problems detected on the street occurred at 2.30am on weekend nights.
Chief Superintendent Michael Finn said new rostering of shifts had meant more gardaí were on the patrol on weekend nights than during the weekend days. He said that while weekend nights remained the peak time for trouble, on foot of the incident, extra resources would be shifted back to daytime patrols in the city centre.