'Considerable' achievements by gardaí in first half of 2025, policing authority says

Vivienne Clarke

The chief executive of the Policing and Community Safety Authority (PCSA), Helen Hall, has said that she finds the “characterisation” of their mid-year assessment as being strongly critical “just a little bit strange.”

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Ms Hall said she thought there were considerable achievements by the gardaí in the first half of 2025.

“It is a mid-year report, seven of the 18 targets are actually on target and there's really considerable positive performance by the guards," she said.

"They've rolled out the op (Operational Policing) model in 21 divisions. They've made significant progress in a lot of areas, drugs and organised crime.

“Performance management though is disappointing and it might sound like quite a corporate type of thing to be worried about, but if you have an organisation of more than 18,000 people, you do need an effective way to both support them and to challenge them to make sure that they are actually doing the job that they're being paid to do."

Ms Hall pointed out that the Crowe report into roads policing earlier this year had highlighted the absence of performance management rather than just roads policing because that's across the entire organisation.

“There is no effective performance management in the guards for either garda members or garda staff and that's something the policing and community safety has, as I said, a very important role watching what the service provides to us in the public on behalf of your listeners. We will continue to do that.

“This is just a mid-year assessment. There's some really positive things for the guards. And even if I take something, for example, that we mentioned as a challenge, cyber security, that's a significant challenge. The face of crime has changed for us all.

“I think there's a challenge for every jurisdiction in this. Criminals are always ahead of the public service, if you like, in terms of technology and the investment that they can make in that. There's a huge demand for Gardaí to be seen and visibility. We've heard that.

“And actually, that's another positive from the report. There's been a real investment by the Garda Siochana in visibility on the streets of Dublin. What I would like to see though, is that extended to other parts of the country.”

Ms Hall acknowledged that An Garda Síochána were not immune to budgetary constraints and they needed the resources if they were to tackle issues like cyber crime. This need for extra resources had been highlighted in the report, she said.

“Good efforts” had been made this year in the way in which new members to the force were recruited, but it would take a number of years “to get it right” and if resources were being pulled to address issues like cyber crime then it meant fewer for other areas like recruitment. Competing priorities were a constant challenge for the force, she added.

With regard to a finding in the report that 44 per cent of women who contacted the gardaí about violence and psychological terror by a partner in the home found that the gardaí were unhelpful, Ms Hall said that the problem was that the growing confidence in the public in reporting such crimes created a challenge.

“Our job is not to say everything is wonderful. This is to say you've done really well, and I think the guards have done really well in the first half, (of the year) but it's to challenge them to do better on behalf of the public.”

On the issue of gardaí using tasers, Ms Hall said the authority would be “closely monitoring” the situation and the topic would be discussed at their monthly meeting with the Garda Commissioner on Thursday.