Early public retirements - Recklessness caused this brain drain

IT is less than reassuring that so many senior gardaí have decided to opt for early retirement at a time when drug arrests have reached record levels.

When considering crime figures, it is always important to retain a sense of perspective but the Central Statistics Office confirmation that gardaí made a drugs arrest every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, in the 12 months to the end of June, should give us all pause for thought.

Controlled-drugs offences are up 15% in that period, with 23,749 offences detected. This is reflected in the increasingly violent culture which has seen so many young men murdered right across the country. This upward trend is reflected in nearly every area of serious crime.

Add the latest report from the European Commission to those domestic statistics and the threat posed by drug gangs can be seen for the great, daunting challenge it is.

The commission tells us the war on drugs has not cut the production, trafficking, availability or use of drugs. Ironically, the cost of illegal drugs in Europe has fallen dramatically — between 10% and 30% — despite the great efforts made to suppress the trade.

The report also points to the “substantial harms”, including the creation of lucrative black markets, worsening political stability and levels of violence. These warnings should not be dismissed easily and we would be foolish not to respond in a way that limits these threats. Anything that reduces our capacity to confront them must be a cause for concern.

That 251 gardaí have retired in the first five months of the year, including 223 early retirements, is most certainly a cause for concern. Included in this figure are very many senior officers whose experience and expertise will not be easily replaced. Many of these men are retiring just as they are in a position to make their greatest contribution to combating crime. They have built up levels of knowledge and experience that are almost priceless. The people who will benefit most from this development are the crime gangs who dominate in the case load of so many of these officers. They will rejoice in the knowledge that some of their sternest protagonists are no longer trying to put them behind bars.

These officers, and so many more State employees right across all sectors, have decided to retire because they fear that their retirement lump sum will be taxed after the December budget. Their fears are well-founded as one of the themes of the McCarthy Report was the unsustainable cost of State pensions and benefits.

We are losing senior gardaí, senior local authority staff, senior health workers and many, many more from education and other vital areas because of this. Most of these early retirees are in the prime of their professional lives and have much, much more to contribute to this society. Their retirements represent an expensive and significant blow to the effectiveness and morale of our public services. It also highlights, once again, the great chasm between the options available to State employees and those available in the private sector.

This brain-drain is an unimagined but very real consequence of the reckless economic mismanagement of this country over the last decade and represents yet another powerful indictment of so many of those still in government.

It is also one of the reasons the Washington Speakers Bureau, which offers the services of Bertie Ahern as an after-dinner speaker, have suggested that he drop his party-piece speech — The Celtic Tiger: the Irish Model of Development — from his portfolio.

Another fine mess indeed.