Garda management confirm just six gardaí will be trained in pursuit driving this year

Niall O'Connor

GARDA MANAGEMENT HAS confirmed that they anticipate that just six gardaí will be trained in pursuit driving by the end of the year. 

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) and Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) along with management from An Garda Síochána appeared at the Oireachtas justice committee to discuss the issues associated with pursuit training.

The committee invited the officials to address them in the wake of the deaths of five teenage boys in a crash on the M9 while they were driving against the flow of traffic.

In August, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly confirmed to him that the pursuit training will begin for the first time this year.

Three sisters and the seven-year-old son of one of the women were injured when they were hit by the car driven by the young boys. 

During the hearing the head of Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Denis Ferry and head of training Chief Superintendent Brian Sugrue spoke about the efforts to train gardaí. They confirmed that while 4,000 members of the force were trained in response driving no one is trained in pursuit tactics. 

Sugrue, who is based in Templemore Garda College, said that training of instructors by Devon and Cornwall Police would likely be concluded in November. They would then attempt to begin training garda drivers in pursuit tactics.

“I would expect realistically a single course of six is probably realistic before the end of the year with a broader roll-out then for 2027. At the moment, I don’t have any instructors trained to run that course,” he said. 

Labour TD Alan Kelly, who asked the question, described the situation as “embarrassing”.

He added “we should never have got to the point in this country where we had to go outside the state to do this. I think everybody is of that view. We should never have got to this point. It’s absolutely incredible that we’re at this point.”

Prosecutions

Earlier, GRA President Niall Hodgins accused the State of bias against gardaí in how the Director of Public Prosecutions decides on charges against members.

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Hodgins was discussing how gardaí are prosecuted for their driving while pursuing cars. The GRA and AGSI have both requested an indemnity in law to protect gardaí who drive in pursuits to reduce their risk of prosecution.

Hodgins said there are a number of gardaí before the courts in regard to on duty driving.

“When your occupation is Garda on a covering report going over to a particular office there that directs prosecutions [DPP], that a particular bar may not be reached, and a decision is made that the courts may decide upon that,” he said. 

Hodgins claimed that in cases in which gardaí are being prosecuted for summary matters at district court level that the State employs junior counsel barristers to prosecute them. He said that this is different from members of the public who will be prosecuted by a garda.

Both the GRA and the AGSI told the committee that gardaí were facing the invidious scenario that if they pursue they can be prosecuted while if they don’t pursue they then could be found to be breach of their duty. 

Ronan Clogher, General Secretary of AGSI, said that his group had looked for an indemnity from prosecution and separate discipline for driving against the flow of traffic or deciding not to pursue. 

‘Damned’

The issue, Clogher said, is that the gardaí face varying degrees of thresholds in which they must decide in seconds to chase or not. 

“You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t with this, because people talk about thresholds all the time and levels thresholds of driving, but the Garda doesn’t know when a garda pursuit starts or a spontaneous pursuit starts, maybe someone drives away from them or turns away from them, the Garda doesn’t actually know what the incident is,” he said.

In his opening remarks Clogher blamed the garda organisation’s lack of interest in pursuit training on an effort to reduce the chance that it would be blamed if a chase went wrong.

“The AGSI are of the view that the greatest obstacle to tackling the problems surrounding Garda Pursuits is a cultural issue surrounding risk aversion within the Garda Organisation.

“The failure to accept any level of corporate risk surrounding this issue will ultimately create a further digression in the organisation’s ability to effectively tackle this issue,” he said. 

Clogher explained that An Garda Síochána had consciously shifted the risk from the organisation to individual gardaí.

Both the GRA representatives and AGSI said that they did not expect training of operational gardaí to actually take place this year.