Gardaí highlight costs of US visits as Pence arrives early

- additional reporting by Juno McEnroe and Pat Flynn

Garda chiefs have laid bare to the Department of Justice the consequences of not providing special budgets for high-level visits to Ireland.

The visit of US vice-president Mike Pence will cost gardaí around €5m in overtime and other costs and follows an estimated €10m cost attributed to president Donald Trump’s visit in June.

Government officials and Garda bosses were hastily rearranging plans for the visit of Mr Pence after his trip was suddenly brought forward, with his arrival now expected on Monday, instead of next Friday.

Two US army Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters, believed to have been flown in for the visit, arrived on Wednesday to Shannon Airport.

Mr Pence is now expected to land in Shannon Airport on Monday evening and stay overnight at the Trump Doonbeg resort.

He will then travel to Dublin on Tuesday for meetings with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and President Michael D Higgins before returning to Co Clare for a family dinner at Morrissey’s Pub in Doonbeg, owned by a distant cousin.

The vice president is then expected to fly out of Shannon on Wednesday.

Mr Pence is arriving early after taking the place of Mr Trump who was due to visit Poland this weekend for Second World War commemorations, but who is now staying home to monitor Hurricane Dorian.

Sources say the Garda set-up is not on the same scale as with Mr Trump’s visit, given the different travel arrangements and lesser threat levels.

The visit has been roughly calculated as costing the Garda around €5m in terms of overtime and other costs which will be in addition to the estimated €10m cost attributed to the US president’s visit in early June.

As reported in the Irish Examiner in July, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was informed by the Department of Justice that the cost of the trips will have to come from the existing Garda budget.

Drew Harris

Senior gardaí said they were taken aback by this decision, saying such visits are traditionally provided for in supplementary budgets at the year end.

Garda sources said the Department of Justice was told by the Department of Public Expenditure that there will be no supplementary Garda budget this year.

“It has been laid out to the department what potential areas may have to be cut back this year in order to absorb the €10m [from the Trump visit] and the €5 or €6m [from the Pence visit],” said a senior Garda source.

“The department has been informed that to protect the frontline it is going to mean that areas like ICT face potential cuts.”

These cuts would affect capital spending and training on technology projects.

Fears that the introduction of the Garda mobility project, involving the provision of 2,000 smartphones to Garda units at a cost of €1.5m, was in jeopardy, appears to have passed after the purchase was given the go-ahead.

The bulk of the threat continues to be on bigger capital projects, such as the investigation and management system, the enterprise content management system, and the roster and duty management system and the training.

Investments in technology have been recommended by the Garda Inspectorate, the Policing Authority and the Policing Commission and the ICT projects are detailed in the Government’s Implementation Plan on the commission’s report.