Ms Antoinette Cunningham:

On the Garda Reserve, last week, we were furnished with the new reserve regulations. We will consider those as an association at our next executive meeting, the week after next. When we track back to the origins of the Garda Reserve, it started off based on the premise of volunteerism, contributing to the community, and people coming in to assist An Garda Síochána as volunteers. They would be there to strengthen the visibility of Garda presence. It then changed somewhat and it almost became a fast-track method to join the organisation itself. People were joining the Garda Reserve for a different reason. If they got into the reserve first of all, that was then seen as a fast-track method to get into the organisation itself. For us as supervisors who have to assign and seek Garda reserves not only to work, but for the duties that they can be assigned to, we identified several issues. Often, the people who were volunteering to be Garda reserves were full-time workers and had full-time jobs. When they came in to work for us, the mandatory rest that they would be entitled to as employees had already been exceeded, thereby creating a difficulty for us in that we could not assign them to duty because they did not have adequate rest between their normal job and the job that we would require them for.

Other issues that emerged were about the availability of reserves at the time when one would actually need them. For example, a big sporting event such as a GAA all-Ireland here in Dublin might need volunteers or reserves. They would not be available at the times they were needed. There have been occasions where the reserves have contributed very well to the organisation. There have been difficulties from a supervisory and allocation perspective. We need to go back and establish what the purpose of the Garda Reserve is. We look forward to looking at the regulations in that regard and, from our point of view as supervisors, seeing if it is something that will be an addition to the organisation and to society generally.

On the issue about training, we are concerned about training in An Garda Síochána. We have been vocal as an association with Garda management in that regard. We have seen a decline in person-to-person training. We now mostly use a learning management system, LMS, for training in new policies and procedures, where a vast amount of law is dumped onto a portal and members are told, within their working day, to go onto that portal and complete some kind of a training course. There is no return to see how adequately that is being put back into the job, to see whether the training relates to the job. It is more of a box-ticking exercise to see if the training has been completed. People are left to interpret policies and procedures in the organisation by way of a portal where there is no interaction with anybody else. It is entirely unsuitable as a single methodology to train members of An Garda Síochána. As a blended approach it has a place, but the amount of in-person training that goes on in An Garda Síochána for ordinary front-line members is low and something that needs to be significantly improved on.

We are concerned about things like pursuit policies. We do not have a pursuit policy and we have seen very well publicised cases recently about pursuits, stand-down of pursuits and all of the issues that emerged regarding people driving the wrong way down motorways and so on.

Like our colleagues in the GRA, we are concerned about the driving instructor training that the organisation has the ability to provide at the moment. We know our colleagues in the driving schools are doing the best they can, but more is needed for all issues regarding driver training and training generally.