Garda management prepared to compel officers to work overtime if required amid rosters dispute
Garda management is prepared to order members to work overtime if required and has assured the Government the ongoing industrial dispute will not have any major impact on frontline policing.
From Tuesday, members of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), which represents 11,000 members of the near 14,000-strong force, will refuse to undertake voluntary overtime.
This will continue every Tuesday until November 10th, when members will withdraw service entirely for the day, a strike in all but name.
Top News Stories
- Accountant has €5m written off in exchange for payment of €15,000 to creditors: A self-employed accountant has had over €5 million in debt written off in exchange for a payment of about €15,000 to creditors. The arrangement for 51-year-old Brian Carrig, from Ashfield, Drogheda, Co Louth, was approved by the High Court on Monday.
- Apology sought from Dublin school for employing former Nazi SS officer as a teacher: Former pupils of St Conleth’s College in Ballsbridge, Dublin have called for an apology from the school’s board of management for employing a former Nazi who physically assaulted them.
- RTÉ and Ticketmaster ‘among worst for customer experience’ while credit unions top list: For the ninth year in a row Ireland’s credit unions finished in first place in the annual customer experience survey carried out by the CX Company but it was not such good news for RTÉ as it was ranked the worst brand in Ireland for the first time.
- ‘I’m honoured to be part of this country’: Some 3,000 people granted Irish citizenship in Dublin ceremonies: With her shiny emerald-green dress and Tricolour on hand, Irish-American Nancy Riley was moments away from becoming a citizen. “After I applied, my husband, who actually was an Irish citizen, passed away and then I got all this support from everybody in Kinsale and people just cheering me on and [now] the day has come. And I am here,” she said beaming.
- Relatives of Belturbet bombing urge Government to take interstate case against UK over Troubles legacy Bill: Relatives of the teenagers killed in the 1972 Belturbet bomb have said the Irish Government must take an interstate case against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights over its controversial new legislation to deal with the legacy of the Northern Troubles.
- Ireland’s weather today: Fresh and breezy today with sunny spells and scattered showers. The sunshine will turn hazy in the afternoon and showers will become more isolated this evening. Highest temperatures of 13 to 17 degrees, coolest in the northwest.
- Happening today: Around 11,000 members of the Garda Representative Association will refuse to undertake voluntary overtime today, in the first of five days of protest over proposed new rosters. Barristers are holding a one-day strike organised by the Bar Council as part of a dispute over legal aid fees.
News from around the World
- Trump threatened with fines of at least $250m as New York fraud trial begins: Donald Trump arrived at a New York court just a few miles south of Trump Tower on Monday for the first day of a fraud trial that could see the former US president and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages
- Ukraine says victory ‘directly’ relies on EU help as Russia predicts Western ‘fatigue’: Ukraine has told visiting European Union foreign ministers that its victory over Russia’s invasion force “directly depends” on co-operation with the bloc, as the Kremlin predicted that the West would tire of supporting Kyiv and “fragment” over the issue.
- Making Britons groan again: Liz Truss steals the show at Conservative party conference: A bit like her 44-day premiership, Liz Truss’s big intervention on Monday at the Conservative party’s conference in Manchester came laced with chaos. Whatever else she does in politics, she doesn’t do boring.
The Big Read
- Ireland in advance of Budget 2024: Booming but with creaking infrastructure: Ireland is booming, thanks to the impact of global tech. So you might expect Brendan, the managing director of a US-owned software development and IT centre in the country’s southeast, to be a happy man. Instead he is worried about recruiting and retaining staff in a country whose creaking infrastructure is not keeping pace with its wealth. Take housing. While the cost of living outside the capital is cheaper than in Dublin, Brendan – who asked for his real name not to be used – finds staff struggle to relocate because there are only a handful of properties for rent in the entire county where his firm is based, writes Jude Webber from the Financial Times.
The best from Opinion
- For years, Ireland has been doing something just as economically stupid as Brexit: In the run-up to next week’s budget, we will be blinded with billions. There’s one big number we really should be thinking about, though: €20 billion. It’s roughly what the long-term effects of letting children grow up in poverty cost Ireland every year, writes Fintan O’Toole.
Culture and Life & Style highlights
- ‘People call the US the land of opportunities and dreams, they’ve obviously not heard of Ireland’: The first thing Stuti Basu noticed when she moved to Ireland was how quiet it was compared with her home country of India. The change was a “big and bold move”, she says, forcing her to leave the comfort of what she knew.
Today's Business
- How much tax have you saved since 2013?: It’s just a week away: next Tuesday we will find out just how the Government is set to share any of the recent surpluses collected by the exchequer with us. While many households would like a generous easing of their tax burdens, that is unlikely to happen – particularly if we look at recent experience.
- Laura Slattery: Will the last person to pay their licence fee please switch off the TV?: Reports that a decision on the future of RTÉ may not be made until after the budget invite an obvious question: which budget? It feels like a rookie error to assume Budget 2024. Maybe it’s Budget 2042?
Top Sports news
- McIlroy and Lowry say absence of LIV players let young stars shine at Ryder Cup: Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry believe the absence of high-profile LIV rebels from Europe’s Ryder Cup team allowed younger members to shine.
- Ireland getting used to being the country the others are all talking about: Even though Ireland adopted a watching brief on the fourth weekend of the World Cup, it seemed as if everybody was still talking about them. It was not just Scottish players talking up their own chances in advance of Saturday night’s Pool B finale in Paris. Nothing new there. It’s been the All Blacks and the Springboks too, and that rascal Rassie Erasmus was still at it on Monday.
Picture of the Day
Letters to the Editor
Sir, – The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use now has just one meeting left before it concludes. It should really have been called the Citizens’ Assembly on Addiction and Recovery because that’s all it’s been about. Out of more than 100 hours of testimony, just seven minutes were given to a presentation about regulation of the cannabis market, the drug that most people come into contact with. The focus should have been on the reason the assembly was called in the first place, how to reform our outdated drug laws which harass and criminalise the 90 per cent of non-problematic users and make it almost impossible for the 10 per cent with problems to recover.
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The witnesses that the chair, Paul Reid, has called to give evidence are almost exclusively from the HSE, the Civil Service and publicly funded treatment services. Establishment voices, with few exceptions, except for disproportionate time given to harrowing testimony of those suffering from problematic use, a tiny cohort, massively over-represented. This has been a huge missed opportunity to develop a new drugs policy that is fit for purpose in the 21st century. Would any Government that was serious about change have appointed the ex-CEO of the HSE as chair, a man inextricably linked with the failed policies of the past? – Yours, etc,
PETER REYNOLDS, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry.
Video & Podcast Highlights
- In the News: Budget 2024: What will it mean for you?: Tax cuts and new spending - but not on a par with last year
Book review of the day
- ‘Chaos, conflict and creativity’: The extraordinary life of Garech Browne: If you wanted to sum up the life of Garech Browne, the founder of Claddagh Records, “chaos, conflict and creativity” would be about right, according to James Morrissey. “Garech could be as erratic as he was eccentric,” Morrissey says. “Claddagh Records was a precarious project which defied business norms. And Garech loved it all the more for that.” Morrissey, the label’s chairman, has just written Real to Reel, a book about the late Guinness heir, whose larger-than-life persona included legendary parties at Luggala, his 5,000-acre estate in Co Wicklow, and whose social circle included Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Pablo Picasso and Lucian Freud, writes Siobhán Long.
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