Wanted: Garda budget that does its duty

“Kick off with the dirty work” is counsel often given to new brooms, and that means attacking costs in commercial enterprises and public services.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has lost no time in doing just that, noting that the service’s overtime bill was €15.5m over-budget by July and heading north to an unsustainable €30m by the year’s end. His consequent ban on discretionary and administrative overtime means that extra hours will be approved only for mandatory work, such as court and scenes-of-crime duties.

The response of the association of sergeants and inspectors has been measured.

Its members quite properly want to see what, if any, impact such cuts might have on core police services that do not require overtime. The Garda Representative Association, however, has responded more theatrically, describing the cutback as an “extraordinary development” that would impact — presumably adversely — all branches of the service.

Mr Harris deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt, at least until the impact, if there is one, on policing.

Meanwhile, there might be a clue in the word “discretionary”, one meaning of which is optional. Optional spending is, by definition, desirable yet not essential and, cutting it ought to have no adverse consequence for the quality of policing.

If the result of a severe cut in discretionary overtime is a demonstrable reduction in the service citizens have a right to expect, it will be clear that what has until now been classified as optional has, in fact, been essential, and that the numbers in the budget have been put — perhaps in an accounting error, perhaps not — in the wrong column.

In that event, a new budget, one that reflects the real cost of essential police services, will be necessary.