Rising garda numbers causes headaches for OPW

The OPW faces an enormous penalty fine should the gardaí fail to vacate the command centre at Harcourt Square in Dublin by the end of next year. Picture: Moya Nolan

The OPW told An Garda Síochána that its entire estate budget for two years needs to be assigned to making sure the force’s command centre is vacated by the end of 2022.

The stark situation facing the OPW, which manages the garda estate portfolio, regarding the command centre at Harcourt Square in Dublin is laid bare in a series of letters from the heads of both bodies.

It emerged earlier this year that the OPW faces an enormous penalty fine should the gardaí fail to vacate the centre by the end of next year, as doing so would see it break the terms of lease with its landlord, property investment vehicle Hibernia REIT.

However, the move has been hampered both by the pandemic and the fact the garda units, such as the economic crime bureau, have grown significantly in size in recent years and, as such, the €86.6m replacement build at Military Road in Kilmainham will be far too small to accommodate them.

In January of this year, chair of the OPW Maurice Buckley wrote to Department of Justice (which funds the gardaí) chief Oonagh McPhillips and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to say that, regardless of the capacity issues, the vacation of Harcourt Square must now be the number one priority for all concerned.

“Whatever capital funding is available to OPW for garda projects over the next two years must be targeted in the first instance to resolving the National Units issue — ahead of other garda projects if necessary,” Mr Buckley wrote.

Failing to do so will compromise the vacating of Harcourt Square.

He said that doing so could impact “on the timeframe for delivery of other priority garda projects unless extra funding can be made available”, specifically the €20m overhaul of Portlaoise Garda Station, a project Mr Harris earlier this year said was a priority.

Given the Portlaoise project has also increased “dramatically” in scale, the funding of same likewise remains “an open question”, he said.

Mr Buckley said that the ever-expanding garda headcount “does not seem to take into account” the accommodation requirements for those additional officers “and how it is to be funded”, a fact which is “having serious ramifications for the OPW”.

The plain fact is that the OPW is not funded to provide such extra accommodation.

In his own January letter in response, Commissioner Harris said that while several mitigation ‘overspill’ projects are in train, there remained two “important” national units for which “there are no proposals available” in terms of replacement accommodation.

Those two units — the Garda National Protective Services Bureau and the aforementioned Garda National Economic Crime Bureau — have since been informed they will be moving to a shared private office space at Clyde House in Blanchardstown — a plan which has been strenuously opposed by the Garda Representative Association, the force’s rank and file union.

“In relation to funding, I can confirm that An Garda Síochána does not have any funding for any of the above matters,” Mr Harris said.

A further complication of vacating Harcourt Square, he said at the time, is the requirement for a new location for the garda data centre, which itself is being forced to vacate the gardaí’s Phoenix Park HQ in order to make way for the Roads Policing Bureau, for which there is no room in Military Road.

“This position should never have arisen and needs to be addressed,” the Commissioner said.