Ms Antoinette Cunningham:

I thank the Chair and members of the committee for the opportunity afforded the AGSI to address them this afternoon. The AGSI is a representative body that represents almost 2,500 sergeants and inspectors, who are mid-ranking supervisors within the Garda organisation.

Our opening statement represents some of the main points that we have already made in our more detailed submissions. We will start off again with the issues around recruitment and retention. An Garda Síochána is no different from other international policy forces because they are currently facing recruitment challenges.

Policing is a challenging and testing career that requires resilience, tenacity and a sense of vocation. Traditionally, the trade-off for those challenges has been great job security, a good pension and the ability to retire earlier as a recognition of the attrition attached to the role.

The difficulties attracting new recruits to join An Garda Síochána is one of the signal biggest challenges currently facing the Garda organisation. Lower numbers and fewer people applying to join means that the fundamental root causes of this problem are not being addressed by Government. There is too much emphasis placed on the narrative that this problem with recruitment originated due to the Covid pandemic when that is simply not true.

The number of people applying to join An Garda Síochána has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years and the most recent 2022 competition attracted under 5,000 applicants. It is clear that young people do not consider An Garda Síochána as an attractive career option and some feel that it is part of their career rather than their total career.

Pension regulations is a contributing factor to the demise of the vocational nature of the job of An Garda Síochána. Both 1995 and 2013 saw significant changes to the pension entitlements of members of the gardaí. The 2013 change, in particular, means that a pension for gardaí who join after that year is simply not sustainable for them to live on and now means that as people move through their career they begin to question whether they can live on their earnings. Larger mortgages and greater expenses mean that people are financially stretched for longer periods of their lives and a desire by some to move to more attractive positions or, indeed, jobs in the Civil Service, has become a feature that we have seen more and more in recent times.

The best recruiters in any organisation always come from within. It is a sad reflection on the current state of An Garda Síochána that lots of serving gardaí or parents do not seem to recommend the job as a choice career for their sons and daughters.

An internal working group has now been established, at the suggestion of the AGSI, to identify where there are recruitment and retention challenges. One of the things that we welcome, as an association, is the fact that the organisation has now established exit interviews. While the organisation has not published any findings yet, these exit interviews are an important evidence-based approach to establish why people no longer find the job attractive to join or, indeed, to remain.

Our most experienced members believe they have more to contribute. It is shameful that a proposal on the extension of the retirement age beyond 60 years to the age of 62 has been with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for some time. This often means that people who are fit, willing and able to carry out contributions to the job are forced to retire because of an age limit placed upon them.

The use and misuse of social media is a major factor. At almost every public interaction in which gardaí are now involved, mobile phones are used to film operational matters. These recordings are often uploaded on to social media platforms and utilised as out-of-context clips without the knowledge of members, and frequently used to threaten members and make a mockery of them, and results in trial by social media. In terms of the stress and welfare impact of this on members is huge and there has been no meaningful Government response, which is unacceptable as far as the AGSI is concerned. If public social media platforms have the right to be seen in Irish society, then limitations on operational police matters should be considered and we would ask the committee to do that.

The bureaucracy and the Garda reform agenda are contained in A Policing Service for the Future, APSFF, which originated in 2018 with the Commission on the Future of Policing. The AGSI would question whether the recommendations contained in the Commission on the Future of Policing remain relevant today. It is our belief that some of those recommendations should be revisited. It is shameful that the office of the APSFF, which is run out of the Department of the Taoiseach, has never engaged with AGSI since its establishment and as a key stakeholder in the Garda organisation we believe that is a mistake.

On the issue of rosters, which has been controversial, AGSI always remembers that our first and primary obligation is to the communities we serve. However, we are also conscious that roster design, work-life balance, health and safety as well as earning consequences have to be discussed. A key requirement in any roster design is flexibility for Garda management to meet the needs of the community and the demands of policing while balancing predictability and certainty in work-life balance for members of a An Garda Síochána. It is welcome after the recent controversies on rosters that we now have established a forum where negotiations will begin in the near future and we in AGSI welcome that and look forward to getting in to discuss the matter of rosters.

In regard to the issue of morale, we see many challenges, some of which are controllable internally, but others which must be challenged externally. The Government has a part to play in matters that have gone from Garda headquarters, which are supported by the gardaí. These include the restoration of travel and sub for members who currently cannot afford to stay in a hotel when attending criminal trials in Dublin because all they receive is €107. That results in members not being able to get a hotel because €107 will not cover the cost of a hotel anywhere in Dublin or its confines, so they are travelling to criminal trials for weeks on end and have to travel up and down the country. That is not acceptable. That matter has been with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for some time and has not been resolved. An extension of the retirement age is also with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, as are proposals on the Garda band, one of our greatest assets, which we see falling in numbers. We are appealing to the Government to make decisions in relation to them.

I will turn to some of the solutions because I am conscious of time. Some of the solutions that could be offered include an independent pay review body for gardaí. There are very specific needs in regard to An Garda Síochána. We are different from any other cohort of public servants. We do not hold the right to go on strike and, therefore, we always negotiate our pay on an unequal basis compared with other public servants. The impact of pension and the impact of earning capacity in relation to roster design could be progressed if there was an independent pay review body for An Garda Síochána. We had a recommendation to amend the training allowance. We welcome the recent budget decision that amended the training allowance for student gardaí.

We need to revisit the right to strike for gardaí. Recent events and events in 2016 have shown us how vulnerable society can be and how powerless Garda management can be if individuals decide to withdraw their labour because of an industrial dispute. On the right to strike, obviously there would have to be minimum controls and emergency cover during strike days but we believe with the appropriate control systems in place and with the proper controls, the right to strike for gardaí should be revisited as it could contain better options than individuals deciding to take action. Long-service pay increments could encourage those within the job to stay.

In 2021 the Government changed the promotion regulations for An Garda Síochána. This was not properly consulted on and has had a hugely demoralising affect on people within the organisation when it comes to promotion opportunities.

The right to disconnect is becoming extremely challenging for our people. As a member of An Garda Síochána and particularly with the introduction of new mobility devices, people at times feel they never have the right to disconnect. If we are serious about addressing morale and some of the policing issues, we should look back at some of the reports and recommendations contained from the inspectorate. It had recommendations that would be helpful. A review of the operating model is also needed.