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Corporate enforcer refuses to make traditional overtime payment for seconded gardaí

Garda Síochána pays 15 minutes overtime to members to allow catch-up briefing ahead of their shifts

The Corporate Enforcement Authority refused to honour a traditional pre-shift overtime payment for 16 gardaí seconded to the agency. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Ken Foxe
Wed May 1 2024 - 13:35

A row broke out between the corporate enforcer and An Garda Síochána over who would pick up the tab for payment of a special allowance to seconded members of the gardaí.

As part of plans to beef up the new Corporate Enforcement Authority, 16 gardaí were transferred to the agency to work on investigating financial crime.

However, disagreement emerged over how they would be paid with the authority disputing the payment of what is known as “briefing time”, or parading time, to the transferred gardaí. Members of An Garda get a payment worth the equivalent of 15 minutes pay each day, technically so that they can get up to speed on what has been happening in the previous shift from colleagues.

The Corporate Enforcement Authority told An Garda Síochána it would not be paying the allowance, according to emails released under Freedom of Information.

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A message from the Garda to the authority last summer said: “It is not possible to exclude briefing time from the overtime costs. Briefing time (attendance by a Garda member 15 minutes prior to the start of their shift) is overtime. “As per the email from [our chief administrative officer] ... it will be for the CEA [the corporate enforcer] to meet these payments along with any other overtime.”

However, the authority said that while briefing time might be recorded as overtime in Garda budgets, the agency considered it a “non-discretionary cost” over which they had no control. “Therefore, as previously advised we will not pay for briefing time,” they said in an email.

In response, An Garda Síochána wrote: “The chief administrative officer indicated that briefing time must be paid ... I will escalate the non-payment [to them].”

There was also confusion over overtime payments with Garda accountants saying in one email that the corporate enforcement authority had miscalculated rates and did not include “double-time” for overtime that gardaí had worked.

One email last November from the Garda finance section said: “I do not have the capacity to go through your workings line by line. I note that you have no hours allocated to double-time while I can see that all members have worked at least 1.75 hours over the three months at the double-time overtime rate.”

The message also said that pay details the corporate enforcer was looking for “far exceed” anything that was normally sought and that a formal agreement on data sharing might need to be looked at.

In other emails, the authority said it should not be liable for overtime payments for December 2022 but that it would be covering costs for all of 2023. However, it pointed out that any expenses incurred by transferred gardaí dealing with cases “predating secondment” to the corporate enforcer should not have to be paid for by it.

“It should be noted that failure to provide invoices setting out the required detail above will undoubtedly result in delays in payment, as the CEA will not make payment until all invoiced expenditure has been fully reconciled with internal approval records.”

Asked about how the issues over briefing time, overtime, and expense payments had been resolved, the Corporate Enforcement Authority said it had no comment to make.

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