It would take a bomb atrocity on the scale of the Dublin Monaghan bombings to generate enough public interest to launch a civilian policing corps, a senior official wrote in 1974 in a government file released in Dublin this week.
The Garda Reserve may seem like a new idea now but in the early 1970s, plans were well advanced for a "community service corps". It was to involve voluntary policing units attached to local Garda stations, without uniform or rank.
In June 1974, the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, told the Dáil that the Government had decided to set up the units to carry out rostered patrolling and to report suspicious activities. The decision was made by a Cabinet sub-committee in the wake of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Mr Cosgrave said the Government wanted to "promote a general spirit of vigilance in our citizens".
He said unattended vehicles would be a particular object of attention for the new force. "We want to make it difficult for the violent to leave their deadly packages in public places with impunity." It was envisaged that there would be about 10,000 people in the Community Service Corps while 196 gardaí would be involved.
The Department of Defence was prepared to help by distributing leaflets to Civil Defence volunteers.
However, the Department of the Taoiseach was not asked for its views when the draft plan was being drawn up. Its officials later gave the plan a very lukewarm reception.
Four months after the plan was first mooted, a Department of the Taoiseach official said "the general public do not believe that the Government are in earnest in this matter or at least that there is a certain amount of foot dragging somewhere on the issue".
He continued: "There is a danger that, with the initial cynicism in the media and the apathetic response from the public, it will take another bomb atrocity to generate the interest necessary to launch a civilian vigilance corps".
He also said it would be unwise to attach the force to local garda stations, "given the Irish "informer" syndrome. "In historical, emotional terms, it will be too redolent of the RIC and its function as "the eyes and ears of the Government". There is a danger that many will regard the proposed service as some form of "stool-pidgeon" [sic] network and will have nothing to do with it," he said.
It was "unfortunate" that police activity around a Garda station tended to have "an unsavoury air and to be regarded as somewhat hole and corner", he added. "This is even reflected in the fact that garda stations do not open their front doors but are approached by their side alleyways."
He said there was strong case for setting the force up as a totally civilian service, based on residents' associations and community groups.
Another Department of the Taoiseach official pointed to "increased pressure from loyalist elements in the North for the establishment of a third force there" following the announcement in the Republic.
He said that, if the plan had been followed up in the days after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, "the feelings of horror and outrage engendered by those incidents would encourage people to join such a service".
The time delay mean he was "not so sure that we can anticipate a favourable response at this stage - particularly when it becomes known that the proposed corps will be a body without a distinctive uniform or other outward form of identity and without a rank structure.
"Anything less likely to attract the young (and the not-so-young) would be difficult to imagine." Te Department of Finance also warned that the plan should be "critically re-examined" because of budgetary problems.
A note from the Government secretary in May 1976 said the plan had been withdrawn from the Cabinet agenda.
