THE DIFFICULTIES encountered when a new Garda sergeant started looking for a home in which to settle on an Aran island with his wife and family were described yesterday to Circuit Court president Mr Justice Matthew Deery.
“There is a reluctance by the islanders to sell property to outsiders,” retired Garda sergeant Christopher Joyce said in the Circuit Civil Court in Dublin. “I searched for sites for a new home but found none for sale.”
Mr Joyce (60) is suing the Garda Commissioner and the State for more than €32,000 expenses related to his transfer in 2000 from Ballina, Co Mayo, to Kilronan sub-district on Inishmore.
In this posting he would also have responsibility for the smaller islands of Inismaan and Inisheer.
He said when he eventually found a site for sale in 2003 he faced huge issues over legal title.
He was refused planning permission as he was not a native islander as laid down in Galway County Council’s development plan.
Barrister Cliona Kimber for Mr Joyce said a non-native could not buy a house on the islands, and he had sold his home in Ballina and moved to a new home in Glenard Avenue, Salthill, Co Galway.
Joe Jeffers, counsel for the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice, told the court Mr Joyce had been fully paid lodging and travel and subsistence allowances. It was denied he was entitled to any further money.
Mr Joyce said the islands were policed from Kilronan by a sergeant and two gardaí on duty for a week at a time. He had travelled from the mainland to Inishmore or among the islands by ferry or aircraft.
He said he had been paid a €7,963 lodging allowance for a 15-month period after his transfer but was suing for over €17,000 house purchase expenses and just over €14,000 house sale expenses as well as furniture removal costs.
He said it was a condition of his contract that he, like any other garda on transfer, would be entitled to repayment of his removal expenses in accordance with a 1998 Garda directive, but said reimbursement had wrongfully been refused.
Mr Joyce also claimed damages for distress and inconvenience, and said he had been put under severe financial pressure because of personally having to pay for removal expenses. He alleged he had been financially compromised and suffered sleep and appetite disturbance and irritability due to worry about being able to provide for his family.
Insp Anne Wedgeworth of the Garda finance directorate said it had been decided Sgt Joyce was not entitled to house purchase expenses as he had bought his new home in Salthill outside a permitted 15-mile limit from the Garda station. She agreed there was no mention of a 15-mile limit in the 1998 Garda directive and the limit referred to previous regulations.
She said Sgt Joyce had abandoned his house purchase expenses claim in 2004, and had made a new claim for house sale expenses which by then was out of time and would have involved a nine-months forfeiture of lodging allowances which Mr Joyce was unwilling to concede.
Judge Deery reserved judgment.