THE STATE may not have the resources to counter a major terrorist threat, the Garda Representative Association has claimed.
The association’s president Damien McCarthy said the force was reliant “on luck” and if a major emergency or terrorist action was unleashed, “then the resources on paper may not match those on the street”.
Speaking at the association’s annual conference in Westport yesterday, Mr McCarthy said gardaí were facing a rising gangland culture, kidnappings, shootings and drugs, with the drug business financing dissident republicanism.
He said the force needed personnel to combat the threat of criminals leveraging control of communities and the numbers required would be closer to 18,000, as opposed to the 13,000 envisaged by the Government.
Mr McCarthy called on Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, who also spoke at the conference, to recognise Garda numbers contributed directly to public safety.
However, Mr Shatter failed to accede to demands for increased numbers, saying Government targets to reduce numbers to 13,000 would still provide for the same numbers in the force as in 2006.
“Many people who think back to 2006 will question if this can be credibly portrayed as a dramatic and unstable reduction,” he said.
Mr Shatter said the Government had not made a final decision on how many gardaí should be in the force, but he said what had a profound impact on public safety was “not a matter of numbers”. Rather he said it was a matter of investigative skill, reliable intelligence, technical support and “smart policing”.
On the issue of a terror threat, Mr Shatter said it would be unsafe to say the threat was not great, but he expressed confidence in the Garda in countering it. “I have every confidence in the Garda’s ability to deal with a major incident or terrorism. Gardaí have a proven record of success.”
He added: “We are all aware of the financial and economic crisis which has led to the need for reductions – reductions which the Garda Representative Association along with other associations and unions have accepted as part of the Croke Park agreement.”
What was needed was for the Croke Park agreement to work. He said he was disappointed by the conference call for the abolition of the Garda Reserve and would have hoped that “voluntary, communal and committed support for the gardaí would have been welcomed by members of the force”.
He told the conference he would shortly publish new legislation on white-collar crime. In the meantime, he said he had asked the Garda Commissioner to ensure the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation had all the resources it needed, particularly for its investigations into banking matters.
On the subject of a DNA database, he said for more than a decade governments had promised it to assist gardaí in investigating crimes. While the last government had published legislation on the issue he said “substantial amendments” needed to be made, and a new Bill should be ready by the end of the year.