Rank and file gardaí jeered and heckled Garda Commissioner Drew Harris on Tuesday as he made a speech about the worsening dispute within the force over new rosters. Mr Harris was addressing the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) when delegates – all rank and file gardaí – made their feelings known, causing him to pause his address momentarily.
The GRA has accused Mr Harris of being unwilling to negotiate with them, and make compromises. The association claims the new rosters would result in some gardaí doing 47 additional shifts per year because shifts will be shorter than their current 12-hour duration.
However, when Mr Harris addressed delegates at the GRA conference in Westport, Co Mayo, on Tuesday morning, he said “the reverse” was true. He was “only interested in a collective agreement” on rosters that “worked best” for the public, Garda members and the efficiency of the force. But finding agreement “is no easy task and was never going to be”.
“It requires compromise by all parties and I have already made comprises, and I am prepared to make more, but I can’t be the only one who makes compromise,” he said, at which point heckling and jeers of “come on” could be heard coming from delegates in the conference hall.
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Mr Harris then told delegates as part of his efforts to reach agreement on rosters, his senior management team had held 64 meetings over three years with the Garda associations. Most of those meetings, he added, were under the chair of an industrial relations expert. However, after “all those meetings” the roster proposed by the expert was rejected by both the GRA, which represents over 12,000 rank and file gardaí, and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI).
GRA president Brendan O’Connor said the reception Mr Harris experienced at the conference was of no surprise considering the number, and strength, of complaints he had received from his members about the mooted new rosters.
“The atmosphere in the room was indicative of the feeling the commissioner lacked a bit of sensitivity to the strength of feeling on the issue,” Mr O’Connor said. “It is about members and their work-life balance, and how it impacts their families. Policing is a difficult career. It does impact on families.
“Loved ones are going out of the house at Christmas, at the weekends when everyone is off, and the guards are going to work. I just thought [Mr Harris’s speech] was a bit insensitive, that [the challenge of being a Garda member] has been referred to in a flippant manner. We are the people who have made the compromise. We won conditions of employment for our members and they’re simply not going to be given up.”
While AGSI has already said its members may “withdraw their service” – a strike in all but name – the GRA said it was now committed to an internal Garda process in an effort to reach a compromise on the rosters issue. The restarting of that internal process was announced last month at the same time Mr Harris said he had deferred the introduction of the new rosters for six months to give the fresh negotiations a chance to reach a compromise.
Mr Harris wants to introduce new arrangements which, he says, better meet the changing policing demands in the Republic. When the pandemic began, core policing units switched to 12-hour shifts and worked four days on, four days off, under a system that remains in place. For those Garda members in the national specialist units, when the pandemic began they maintained the 10-hour shifts they had always worked.
However, under Mr Harris’s new plan, most Garda members would switch to eight-hour shifts. The new arrangements would at times result in Garda members working for seven consecutive days followed by two days off and another seven days working.
The GRA and AGSI said that will mean up to 47 extra shifts per year for their members, who will also lose an average of about €2,000 per year in remuneration because they will lose allowances.
