Gardaí failed to curb trebling of overtime

The Garda overtime bill has more than trebled in three years and management efforts to bring it under control last year were “ineffective”, the C&AG says.

The State financial watchdog said there is “little detail” available regarding the operational reasons for the overtime, which has climbed from €38m in 2014 to €132m in 2017.

The C&AG did point out that 40% of overtime expenditure (€53m) is not discretionary — because of obligations to attend court and escort prisoners as well as the costs of a pay agreement.

Seamus McCarthy said that driving forces behind the additional €79m overtime spend include the setting up of specialist police units and dedicated operations preventing assassinations by feuding gangs.

The C&AG report said the €132m overtime bill for 2017 represents 12% of the overall pay bill and is “three and a half times” the overtime cost of €38m in 2014.

The report said part of the overtime increase in 2017 is the result of a pay agreement aimed at averting the country’s first ever strike by frontline gardaí and supervisory ranks.

The cost of this agreement was €28.3m, which included the integration of a rent allowance of €4,655 into salaries and the introduction of a paid 15-minute pre-tour (or parade) briefing sessions, paid at the overtime time rate (1.5 times basic salary).

The report said members at the end of their tour of duty (28 days) complete a handwritten record of their hours worked, including extra duty — which is then examined and certified by a supervisor and then by the district officer.

But the C&AG said: “Little detail is available about the operational reasons the overtime claimed was required.

“The manual duty records include a section seeking information on the nature of the duties performed during periods of extra duty,” it said. “This section of the form is not always completed in sufficient detail to support analysis.”

It said that much of the extra duty hours worked are assumed to represent ‘regular overtime’.

“Around €98m or 75% of the overtime expenditure in 2017 has been analysed as regular overtime with a further 21% attributed to organised crime operations and Operation Thor,” the report said.

The C&AG said regular overtime includes a wide range of activities such as court attendance, crime investigation, crime prevention, prisoner escorts, immigration, events and traffic operations.

It can also include certain organised operations, particularly outside the Dublin Metropolitan Region and certain expenditure on border security operations and support for measures against terrorism.

It said efforts to limit overtime during 2017 were “unsuccessful” and that the allotted €88.5m budget was spent by August.

“Management practices to control the overtime budget in 2017 were ineffective,” concluded the report.

The report noted the €28m overtime cost from the pay deal and the obligations to conduct duties in courts and in escorts meant that €53m (40%) of the total overtime bill was not discretionary.

It said costs “driving” the €79m discretionary overtime include:

• New policing units such as Cyber Crime and Divisional Protection Units, which have to be staffed by experienced members, including on overtime
• Actively preventing assassinations by criminal gangs — with successful interventions leading to “considerable savings” in the long term arising from avoiding the significant expense of murder investigations.

The report said more than 50 gangland assassinations were prevented during the year.

“Undertaking operational activity of the nature described above is highly labour intensive involving considerable expense in the nature of overtime ‘up front’,” the report said.

The C&AG said efforts to address overtime were attempted in July and again this month.

Commissioner Drew Harris, sworn in at the start of September, said he will rein in the overtime bill after figures, reported in the Irish Examiner, showed the 2018 overtime budget was €15m in the red by July and will hit €30m by the end of the year.

He sent out directives to regions and specialist units to clamp down on overtime.