OPW refuses to clarify how it miscalculated capacity needed for new Garda facility

The build at Military Road has only space for 880 personnel, 200 fewer Garda members than were working at Harcourt Square in 2016 when Military Road was first chosen as the site of the new operations centre. File picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

The Office of Public Works (OPW) has refused to clarify how it underestimated the capacity needs for the new €86.6m Garda Dublin control centre by a factor of more than 500 personnel.

Earlier this month, the chair of the OPW Maurice Buckley told the Public Accounts Committee that the body “does not progress a project beyond the planning stage (of a construction project) until the brief and scheme is agreed with the client to ensure that any changes, such as staff increases anticipated at the time or operational change, are incorporated into the scheme".

However, this statement would appear to be at odds with how the OPW, the body with responsibility for the State’s property portfolio, managed the site choice and employee capacity of An Garda Siochána’s new operations centre at Military Road in Dublin, from where the force was due to decant from its old base at Harcourt Square before the end of 2022.

In the wake of the OPW’s appearance at the PAC on December 15, the Irish Examiner asked the body how the build at Military Road has only space for 880 personnel, 200 fewer Garda members than were working at Harcourt Square in 2016 when Military Road was first chosen as the site of the new operations centre.

The level of Garda personnel at Harcourt Square had in fact increased by around 400 members in the intervening five years, leaving the space available at Military Road as even more inadequate than it would previously have been.

The OPW had not replied to this paper’s request for comment at the time of publication, nearly two weeks after that request was lodged.

At the PAC meeting on December 15, chair of the OPW Maurice Buckley made repeated references to there having been 600 gardaí present at Harcourt Square in 2015.

That was at odds with previous statements Mr Buckley had made in which he suggested the actual figure was between 800 and 900 in Harcourt Square at that time, while the OPW has previously stated on record that the figure that needed to be moved was 1,090 as of May 2016.

At the PAC meeting on December 15, chair of the OPW Maurice Buckley (pictured) made repeated references to there having been 600 gardaí present at Harcourt Square in 2015,  at odds with previous statements Mr Buckley had made in which he suggested the actual figure was between 800 and 900. File picture. Orla Murray

When quizzed by Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy regarding the apparent contradictions in his statements, Mr Buckley said that the 600 figure “was the number of staff actively using Harcourt Square in 2015”.

He said that the 800 figure he had previously quoted “was the planned figure, taking account of future growth”. He then added that the number of gardaí “has grown in the meantime” to “something in the region of 1,400 as opposed to 800”, “which is a positive thing”.

Mr Buckley’s assertion that the 880 planned capacity of Military Road was designed to account for Garda expansion over the period of the new command centre’s construction is likewise at odds with his previous statements on the subject.

In January 2021, the OPW chair wrote to secretary general of the Department of Justice Oonagh McPhillips to state that the Military Road build ”in simple terms, has always been intended as a one-for-one replacement accommodating the 2016 numbers in Harcourt Square”, indicating Garda expansion had never been factored into the construction in any way.

The issue of there not being enough room for the relevant gardaí in Military Road has seen the force’s specialist units accommodated as a stopgap in at least six “overspill” facilities around Dublin, at a cost as yet unknown.