'No penalty' for OPW if An Garda Síochána fails to vacate HQ on time

Garda Headquarters, Harcourt St, Dublin.

The Office of Public Works (OPW) will face no penalty should An Garda Síochána fail to vacate its security headquarters in Dublin by the end of 2022.

That is despite multiple citations in recent years which suggested such a penalty clause would apply.

No specific figure for the penalty has ever been publicly stated but, on a number of occasions, it has been claimed there could be "huge financial implications" should gardaí not vacate the Harcourt St premises before the end of 2022.

Asked what the penalty is, a spokesperson for the OPW, which manages both the Garda lease and the construction of the new Garda premises on Military Rd in Kilmainham in the south of the capital, denied its existence.

“The lease held by the Commissioners of Public Works in respect of the Harcourt Sq premises does not contain a penalty clause and, therefore, the issue does not arise,” said the spokesperson.

The lease on the Harcourt Sq building, which currently houses specialist Garda units along with the Criminal Assets Bureau, was extended for five years in 2016 at a cost of €6m per year.

The construction of the new six-storey Garda command centre in Kilmainham began in March this year but was delayed for several months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

That project is currently slated to be completed for €86m, some €6m over the initial €80m estimate.

In January, OPW Commissioner Maurice Buckley told Garda Commissioner Drew Harris of the “huge financial implications” should An Garda Síochána not have vacated Harcourt Sq before the end of 2022. 

He said that he would not like to put an estimate of the figure in question on the record.

In October 2018, at a six-hour appearance before the Public Accounts Committee, OPW Commissioner John Sydenham acknowledged that a failure to vacate Harcourt Sq in time would trigger “multimillion euro penalty clauses”. 

He said that the penalty was not defined as a specific amount, but would result from Hibernia seeking to recoup market losses from the State due to its failure to leave the property.

Likewise, the Policing Authority’s fifth report on 'changing policing in Ireland' in June 2018 mentioned that the Military Rd project would be “particularly intolerant to slippage in dates, as the lease on Harcourt Square will trigger multimillion euro penalty clauses if the premises is not vacated on time”.