GARDA SERGEANTS and inspectors want an end to performance-related bonuses for their superior officers and are also seeking assurances from Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern that frontline policing will not be compromised due to cuts in spending.
The annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (Agsi), which begins this evening, is set to be dominated by debate on the impact of reduced expenditure on pay and policing. Delegates will hear calls for an end to performance-related bonuses for their superior officers.
Both Agsi and the Garda Representative Association were critical of the Government last week after reports emerged relating to the impact of the public service recruitment and promotion freeze on the Garda. Recruitment to the force has effectively stopped.
A surge in age-related retirements over the next three years will mean the Government’s target of a 14,900-strong force by 2010 will not be met. Numbers are likely to fall to close to 14,000, or lower, within the next 18 months. Agsi will seek assurance from Mr Ahern that frontline policing will not be undermined.
Delegates are expected to express concern that the powers of the Garda Commissioner to make his own promotions at middle-management level have now been assumed by the Minister for Finance.
Away from recession-related issues, motions contain calls for a range of new facilities and training options to ensure members of the force are best placed to deal with the increasing number of juvenile criminals. Delegates will be asked to support motions calling for the introduction of a comprehensive out-of-hours social worker service.
Currently whenever gardaí are called upon to invoke section 12 of the Children’s Act, and take children from their homes to a place of safety, they have few options regarding the immediate care of that child if he or she is taken from the home out of office hours. In many instances gardaí have had to leave children to be cared for in local hospitals or accommodate them in Garda station cells.
Another motion will call for gardaí to be trained in specialist child-interviewing techniques; the issue of complaints against members of the force being lodged with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission will also be raised.
