Gardaí clocked up nearly 170,000 hours of overtime costing around €4 million during an 18-hour visit to Ireland by US president George W Bush, the Labour Party has said.
Labour's justice spokesman, Mr Joe Costello, said figures obtained in a written reply to a Dail question revealed an "astonishing" 169,000 Garda overtime hours were required to meet the security arrangements for President Bush's visit here last June.
Mr Costello said that, while the minister could not give him a final figure for the cost of all security arrangements for the visit because some items remained outstanding, a total of €8.027 million had been clocked up to date.
"Any political leader coming to this country has the right to expect that all appropriate action is taken to ensure his or her security. However, crime-harassed communities, which are being starved of Garda resources, will be astonished to find that the government had no difficulty in coming up with apparently limitless Garda resources for the visit and that money did not appear to be a problem," Mr Costello said.
"Garda overtime costs around €25 per hour, so the total cost of the overtime alone is likely to have amounted to around €4.225m. Based on an annual average salary of around €40,000, the €8.027m would be sufficient to pay for 200 extra gardai.
"I think the Irish taxpayer is entitled to ask if we got value for the huge expenditure involved in what appeared to be basically a pre-election photo-opportunity for President Bush."