For retired garda chief superintendent Pat Lordan, community policing must be prioritised whether it is on the wild west coast of Ireland or deep in the maze of housing estates in Tallaght, where he spent his formative years as a garda.
Since his retirement two years ago, the west Cork native lives in a remote coastal area of Co Mayo overlooking the ever-changing panorama of the ocean.
Even though walking along the rugged coastline is for pleasure these days, Lordan often reflects on how exposed it is: a wide-open gateway for all sorts of illegal traffickers, subsea cyberattacks and smuggling.
“I’m aware that Coastal Watch has been reintroduced in some areas, but it needs to be operating right along the coast using a co-ordinated approach with all agencies involved and the local guard the link to the local community,” he says.
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While starting out in 1986 as a rookie garda in the old station in Tallaght – ironically, now a funeral home – he quickly realised that immersion in a community and familiarity with all age groups is key to effective policing.
“As a result of the work done by a staunch superintendent Bill McMunn, there was a re-emphasis put on community policing,” he says.
“By 1988 I was walking in areas of Tallaght where no guard had walked before, with the young girls and boys calling you by your first name. It was really the most rewarding time of my career.”
This was a stellar career which culminated in Lordan heading up the increasingly busy national economic crime bureau.
Now having retired after 37 years, he has time to indulge in his passion of hillwalking, hiking – and observing the workings of An Garda Síochána from a different perspective.
“Policing in isolated areas needs community guards doing their job full-time; otherwise they are not providing sufficient value to a community if they are called away to a bigger station for a few weeks on an investigation,” he says.
“I would put them back full-time into such rural stations here in Co Mayo as Geesala, Mulranny, Newport and Ballycroy.”
He cited the example of how, during stormy weather in August, an unusual boat came into Clew Bay and stayed between Clare Island and Silver Strand.
“Everyone was talking about it. It was there for shelter but let’s say a rib or a small yacht comes in during good weather for nefarious reasons, it’s not going to be using its AIS (transponder system), so the eagle-eyed locals are very important,” he says.
Despite the fact that the Co Mayo has a coastline of 1,168km – a fifth of the country’s shoreline – it has now been amalgamated into one Garda division with Roscommon and Longford.
Lordan says there are 580 guards to police this whole area for traffic, drugs, human trafficking, public order, community policing and engagement.
“I think the biggest mistake made over the last seven years was we followed the various reports and strategies arising from the Commission on the Future of Policing to the nth degree,” Lordan says.
“Transforming An Garda Síochána 2018-2024” recommended the amalgamation of 28 divisions into 19, whilst creating a divisional structure with specialised functional hubs and a new administrative system.
“That was fought tooth-and-nail by many chief superintendents who argued that this would not work in many of our rural areas and indeed the GRA (Garda Representative Association) also opposed it, but nobody listened to the gardaí on the ground.
“Our former commissioner, Drew Harris went ahead anyway and now they are accepting that it doesn’t work on many levels and they are beginning to roll it back, as has happened in Donegal already,” Lordan says.
He says the commissioner was told by many gardaí thatcombining Donegal with Sligo and Leitrim would never work.,
“Nobody asked how much money did it cost to combine all these divisions and now we are going back to where we were, which is where we should have stayed in the first place,” he argues.
“I’ve just done some tour-guide training and the Wild Atlantic Way runs from the Inishowen peninsula to Kinsale, that is roughly 2,600km of coastline. It’s an impossible task to police it but we should at least try.
“A guard from Letterkenny or Claremorris or Bandon can’t police all the villages and little harbours and piers along the coastline. There isn’t even a superintendent in Westport, where its population triples during the summer months and there is a huge increase in marine traffic,” he says.
Tellingly, a response to an Oireachtas question by local Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon in 2022 revealed there were only five garda stations operating on a 24/7 basis in the county. They were Ballina, Belmullet, Castlebar, Claremorris and Westport. Meanwhile, the coastal town of Killala’s station opened every Wednesday from 3pm to 4.30pm whilst a clinic in the community centre of the village of Ballycastle, on the Wild Atlantic Way and near the Céide Fields Visitor Centre, opened on the first Wednesday of every month from noon until 1pm.
Nine stations, which include the coastal towns and villages of Newport, Louisburgh, Achill and Keel, were only open to the public when an officer was rostered and available, according to the information provided to Deputy Dillon.
Interestingly, the breakdown of contemporary official figures for the operational times of stations on the garda website tells a very different story.
Take the west Mayo village of Louisburgh. The website states that the station is open from 10am to 1pm every day, as it does for such small coastal stations as Achill Sound, Keel and Newport.
The reality is quite different said a garda who works in the west Mayo region and spoke to The Irish Times on condition of anonymity.
“Gardaí assigned to the smaller stations are very accommodating and in the case of Louisburgh, that garda has diverted the landline to his work mobile. He makes himself available to sign forms and deal with people’s concerns even when he is off duty.
“However, as for the official times on the website, that is not how it works and he has probably just worked one day in Louisburgh over the last two months because he is part of a unit, about to be further depleted this month, covering Westport,” the garda said .
“Officers are frequently redeployed to support other stations, which leaves their own areas short of cover. This reduces visible policing and can delay response times for local communities. We urgently need more staffing and resources to ensure every area gets a consistent and reliable policing service,” they said.
They cited the fact that the division of Mayo-Roscommon-Longford now stretches from Erris Head to Granard. The policing needs in remote coastal areas like Belmullet are vastly different from those in urban centres like Longford, which is why tailored resources and staffing are essential.
“Our north-western coastline, particularly around Mayo, is vast, rugged and difficult to monitor, which makes it attractive to organised crime groups seeking to land drugs. While we work closely with the Coast Guard, customs, and the naval service, its sheer scale means gaps remain. Increasing dedicated coastal policing and surveillance would act as a strong deterrent and allow us to respond more quickly to suspicious activity, whilst protecting our communities,” the garda continued.
Westport-based retired garda detective, Christy Hyland, agrees that the west coast is wide open for all sorts of criminal activity.
“It is past time to set up well-resourced drug units along the west coast. It is open season here in west Mayo with all the holiday homes and marine leisure activities. If you had a local garda like it used to be, he would be able to tell you who was in the holiday home and whose boat was anchored offshore,” says Hyland.
Responding to questions by The Irish Times, a Garda spokesman confirmed that Coastal Watch was first established three decades ago as an inter-agency initiative between the gardaí, Revenue’s Customs Service and the Irish Naval Service. Having petered out over time, it was reintroduced in Co Galway in 2023 and also reestablished in the Belmullet area in August with similar schemes also operating in Limerick, Kerry and Cork.
“This multi-agency initiative is primarily aimed at detecting and preventing the importation of illegal drugs, but also highlights the importance of vigilance by coastal communities and the wide range of businesses and groups that operate at sea, and along the west coast and its harbours,” he said.
However, “for operational reasons” the garda spokesman declined to confirm whether the reintroduction of Coastal Watch had led to an increase in tip-offs and discoveries of criminal activity.
As retired chief supt Pat Lordan observes, vigilance of our coastline now needs to include the landing of drugs by so-called narco-submarines also.
After all, if the Germans could slip into Killary Harbour with their U-boats during the second World War, the advanced technology being employed for these drug carriers is ideal for landings along the west coast.
