Cork detective critical of management over lack of garda manpower

ALL of the operational issues currently facing An Garda Síochána come down to a lack of manpower, and a failure of imagination by management, a Cork member of the central executive committee of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) has said.

“The vast majority of issues can be resolved if you have resources,” Pádraig Harrington told The Echo at the GRA annual conference in Westport this week.

“The roads policing unit in Cork; down from 44, down to now 20, from 12 years ago. All the road deaths — and they’re wondering why. ‘Why’ is because they don’t have enough people to do checkpoints and to do roads policing, and that’s why road deaths are rising, because not alone are garda numbers falling in Cork, they’re falling all over the country.”

A detective based in the Bridewell, Mr Harrington’s strong endorsement of the new Garda roster agreed with senior management — “I think it’s a fantastic deal” — was preceded at the conference by an admission that he has been an outspoken critic of previous rostering plans.

His endorsement was greeted with loud applause, and the proposal that the GRA accept the new roster was passed unanimously.

Disagreements

Disagreements about rostering have been at the heart of recent fractious relations between Garda management and the GRA, which represents more than 11,000 of the force’s 14,000 gardaí.

Last September, 99% of GRA members voted no confidence in Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, and this week he became the very first commissioner to not be invited to the GRA annual conference. In turn, Justice Minister Helen McEntee declined an invitation, saying it would be inappropriate for her to attend in Mr Harris’s absence.

GRA general secretary Ronan Slevin this week told The Echo that the issue between Mr Harris and rank-and-file gardaí was not personal, and Mr Harrington said all the operational issues facing the force are down to resources.

“Everything goes on it,” he said.

“In my own office, we’re down from 12 people from 12 years ago — effectively to three people now handling investigations because we have two in an incident room covering the murders that happened in Cork in 2023. There’s a huge body of work there and it requires two of them to do that, to ensure that the families receive justice. And that’s replicated in every section in the guards in Cork city and around the country, we just don’t have enough numbers.”

Mr Harrington said management had not agreed to the GRA’s suggestion that overtime be approved to facilitate the clearance of investigations.

Scathing

He was scathing of the recent directive from Mr Harris that all uniformed gardaí complete 30 minutes of “high-visibility” roads policing per shift, saying it would have a knock-on effect on response times.

“Everything comes back to resources,” he said. “You’re asking the regular units to do half an hour’s roads policing. Absolutely ridiculous. There’s something else backing up because they’re doing a half an hour’s roads policing.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Again, they should be bringing in the roads policing lads to do those checkpoints; if that’s what the commissioner and the Government want, that’s what should be done.”

Mr Harrington said the number of recruits currently in Templemore’s Garda Training College was simply not sufficient to immediately address manpower issues.

“Everything comes back to resources and retention,” he said. “We have a huge amount of people leaving because the pressure that they’re under, and we have something coming down the line now in relation to discipline and conduct regulations and performance regulations.

“And that’s down to people that have no idea about policing that are writing these regulations.”