AGSI CONFERENCE:GARDA SERGEANTS and inspectors yesterday called on the Government to permanently end the payment of performance-related bonuses to senior Garda officers, arguing that the State can no longer afford it.
Delegates at the AGSI annual conference in Athlone, Co Westmeath, were told that €185,000 was paid in 2007 to a “select” 15 senior Garda officers.
The conference also heard that many motorists caught speeding or using mobile phones were escaping sanction because of a loophole in the law.
Sgt Paraic Tully, representing the group’s national executive, said when notices of an infringement were delivered by registered post they were sometimes not accepted. And when they were delivered by regular post there was no way of proving their delivery.
People were claiming in court that they had never received the notice and so could not pay the fine and because of this had ended up before the courts. When this explanation was offered to a court the matter was often struck out.
Sgt Tully said if all motorists were told they must pay their fine they could then have the money returned if it was later found that the notice of infringement had never reached them by post, as they claimed in court.
Sgt John Sherlock, representing the Cavan-Monaghan Garda division, told delegates that a total of €3 million in bonuses was paid in 2007 to senior public servants and senior Garda and Army officers.
The average payment was €14,000, with some beneficiaries receiving €26,000. The bonuses were awarded to people on salaries ranging between €138,683 to €186,891, according to figures presented to delegates.
“These payments and bonus awards stand in stark contrast with the awards afforded to other public servants in the benchmarking process, whose performance payments were hard earned.”
Sgt Sherlock said the recruitment and promotions ban introduced for An Garda Síochána would compromise frontline policing. “The time has now come to demand prudent fiscal management of all public monies and insist that the payment of performance-related bonuses to senior Garda officers cease immediately.”
While Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has already announced bonuses will cease due to the weakening public finances, Sgt Paul Wallace of the Donegal Garda division said he wanted the payment of bonuses to senior Garda officers permanently abolished. The bonus system was unfair and should never have been put in place.
“Performance-related targets in any organisation are not achieved by members in the upper echelons; they are achieved via the delivery of a service or product to the consumer,” he told delegates.
In the case of An Garda Síochána, performance targets were met by all members of the force serving the public.
According to figures compiled by AGSI, the €3 million bonuses in 2007, the last year for which full figures are available, were paid to 194 senior civil servants, 12 senior officers in the Defence Forces and 15 senior gardaí.
The Department of Foreign Affairs received most of the money, with 48 officials sharing €656,000. The Department of Justice was next, with 15 of its officials sharing €177,000.