New Garda HQ will be too small to accommodate all staff

A new headquarters for the Garda command centre in Dublin will be too small to accommodate all personnel.

A new headquarters for the Garda command centre in Dublin will be too small to accommodate all personnel stationed at its current HQ as the project was planned using a headcount taken up to eight years ago.

The Office of Public Works (OPW), the State body with responsibility for managing much of Ireland’s public property portfolio, has said that “planning for the new Military Road development commenced a number of years ago and the design of the building is based on the numbers of An Garda Síochána personnel which existed back then”.

The €86m Military Road build in Kilmainham, south Dublin, began construction early last year. It is under a significant time constraint due to An Garda Síochána being contractually obliged to vacate its current command centre on Harcourt Square in the city centre by the end of 2022 or risk paying a massive breakage fee to the landlord, Hibernia REIT.

Evolving needs

In reply to a parliamentary question tabled by Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy, the OPW said it “understands” the Garda's “evolving workforce planning needs”.

It said that it has been “very pro-actively engaging with An Garda Síochána in identifying accommodation solutions to meet their recent additional operational needs”.

The command centre at Harcourt Square, which has been rented by the OPW on behalf of An Garda Síochána since the early 1980s, currently plays host to, among others: the force’s Dublin operations centre, arms stores, the armed response unit, a cyber crime unit, and the Criminal Assets Bureau. In 2016, it housed more than 1,000 gardaí, a figure which is believed to have risen considerably in the interim.

It is understood that space will not exist at Military Road to house multiple Garda divisions currently in place at Harcourt Square, while the OPW has identified a number of overspill sites in the city to accommodate the surplus personnel.

At present the Military Road project is slated for completion, pre-fitout, by September 2022. The OPW had first moved to identify potential replacement locations for Harcourt Square in 2014.