AGSI calls for extra budget to ensure crimes properly investigated

The Garda Commissioner was today urged by a senior AGSI official to obtain a supplementary budget from the government to ensure that intelligence obtained by gardaí can be followed through on to stop crime.

AGSI president Tim Galvin reminded interim Garda Commissioner, Noirin O'Sullivan that AGSI members had contributed to cost savings under the Haddington Road Agreement before pointing out that policing was not like other areas in the public sector.

“We can’t predict at the start of the year how many crimes we will have or how many protests we will be expected to police or how many road collisions will need to be investigated,” he said.

There must be scope to secure a supplementary budget or gardaí will find themselves in a situation where they are unable to act on good intelligence to prevent a crime or where they are expected to full investigate a murder without the necessary resources.

“Regrettably it is our members who will be left to tell the victim or their family why no progress is being made or no one made amenable for the crime,” said Mr Galvin in his reply to interim Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan’s address to delegates.

Mr Galvin said that it was clear from speaking with AGSI members that ever increasing demands were being placed on the 2,000 sergeants and inspectors around the country with many now being asked to carry out duties previously assigned to superintendents.

He instanced sergeants and inspectors now being asked to carry out property audits, cell inspections and delivering directions on files which was previously done by superintendents and this was happening at a time when the number of sergeants and inspectors is dropping.

“Commissioner if we had sufficient numbers of sergeants and inspectors meeting the demands being placed on our members, this could be somewhat alleviated,” said Mr Galvin who is a sergeant station in Dun Laoghaire.

“This does not mean that you should continue to assign roles or functions to our members that are more appropriate to senior managers but it would mean that our members could do the job they were promoted to do - supervise, coach, mentor and direct.”

“Statistics are all well and good but saying that we have the proper ratio of sergeants and inspectors to gardaí does not stand up to scrutiny in operational stations across the country,” he said.