*Photograph: Martin Connolly
Clare’s amount of Garda members has increased by just six in the space of ten years.
Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris addressed Monday’s meeting of the Clare Joint Policing Committee where he detailed plans for the new operating model within An Garda Síochána.
Among the plans are increased recruiting for Gardaí and the removal of non-core policing duties from An Garda Síochána. Harris said that 14 Gardaí had been reassigned to the frontline from various administration positions in the Clare Division while over the past ten years, there has been an increase of six Garda members in the Division.
Chair of the JPC, Cllr John Crowe (FG) and Deputy Cathal Crowe (FF) pressed the Commissioner on whether he had plans to increase the amount of Gardaí stationed in the county.
Commissioner Harris in response welcomed the commitment from last week’s Budget to recruit 800 more Gardaí which he said would equate at 450 new members given that “we always have about 350 cessations in any year”.
He expected there would be 14,600 Garda members across the country by the end of next year with a strong proportion of this to be allocated to divisional policing, he said the soon to be amalgamated Clare and Tipperary Garda Division “will get their share of those”.
Deputy Crowe stressed that Clare is “a rural county wedged between two cities, it has an international airport and a number of Direct Provision sites, we’ve the largest town in Munster that isn’t a city, there are many reasons why Clare deserves more Gardaí”.
Addition of six Gardaí to the Division in a decade was labelled as “alarming” by the Meelick native. He noted that the closure of the Garda station in Broadford has put “added pressure” on Killaloe and Ardnacrusha. He issued an appeal following the commitments in the Budget to “free up more Gardaí to be back on the beat in Clare”.
Garda presence has decreased as villages have grown in size, Cllr Crowe told the meeting. “In the last number of years we’ve seen small villages growing up into towns, the big problem with the increase in population in a lot of these areas the Garda representatives on the ground has in fact been decreased”.
