McEntee says no Garda units will be disbanded during reorganisation

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said no Garda units will be “disbanded” during ongoing change within the organisation.

Ms McEntee said while there may be some reorganising of units, she had received assurance from the Garda Commissioner that there would be no “diminution” in garda responses to public issues.

She was responding to media reports that major crime units in Limerick were to be disbanded.

Speaking to reporters at the National Ploughing Championships, Ms McEntee said she “knows there are problems” around garda morale at the moment.

Her comments come after almost 99% of gardai who voted in the ballot organised by the Garda Representative Association expressed no confidence in Commissioner Drew Harris.

The unprecedented vote stemmed from discontent within the force, mostly around the commissioner’s plan to return to a pre-pandemic roster from November 6.

She called for representative organisations “to get around the table” to negotiate issues.

Asked about requests from frontline gardai for more members on the streets, Ms McEntee said: “I want more gardai too, we share that same objective.”

She said there was also a need for more capital investment in equipment and technology.

Ms McEntee was given a demonstration of body-worn cameras used in other jurisdictions as the Government seeks to introduce the technology here.

She said the cameras would support gardai in their work and keep them safe.

Some of these cameras support a backwards “buffer” of 10-15 seconds upon activation of the cameras to ensure an incident that had just happened was recorded.

It involves the cameras constantly rewriting a time period of video so that it is available when the record button is pressed.

However, some of the companies do not provide for audio to be recorded in this way.

Asked about whether she would like to see audio stored in the same fashion, Ms McEntee said she would need to see more detail on how the cameras operate.