A NUMBER OF questions have yet to be answered in relation to the secret deal to house former Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, Labour TD Eoghan Kenny has said.

The Cork North Central TD has written to the current Garda Commissioner, Justin Kelly, and the head of the Office of Public Works (OPW), John Conlon, demanding clarity on the timeline of when the lease was taken out on a property rented on behalf of Harris. 

It emerged last week that the former head of the gardaí lived in a property owned by the OPW in Phoenix Park rent-free for seven years. 

A spokesperson for the OPW confirmed to Kenny during a sitting of the Public Accounts Committee that Drew Harris had lived in the property on Spa Road, Phoenix Park for the duration of his tenure as Commissioner.

During this time, the rent was paid by An Garda Síochána to the OPW, which owned the property. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice has said it is understood that Harris paid benefit in kind in respect of the arrangement.

Commissioner Harris was the first policeman from outside the State to be appointed Garda Commissioner. The Department of Justice said in a statement last week that, on a recommendation from the Policing Authority, it was deemed appropriate to provide for accommodation or an accommodation allowance for Harris, given the requirement for the Garda Commissioner to reside in Dublin, and in light of the fact that the Commissioner is on call 24/7 throughout the year.

The rent for the property was charged at €21,000 per annum – or €1,750 a month – and this did not increase throughout the years Harris lived there.

The property had also undergone €400,000 worth of renovations before Harris moved in from 2018 to 2025. 

Questions now remain over when exactly An Garda Síochána leased the property and whether or not it was before the competition to fill the commissioner position began.

“I think the biggest outstanding issue is that John Conlon said at the Public Accounts Committee that the gardaí had requested this accommodation in 2017, despite the fact that Drew Harris didn’t take up his role until 2018, and the competition for the Garda Commissioner didn’t actually take place until 2018,” Kenny told The Journal. 

“So I suppose the question is now, how did they know they would have needed this accommodation? Because precedent had never been set before for the Garda Commissioner to be in a property owned by the State.”

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He added: 

“The significant issue is, did An Garda Síochána know before the competition for the Garda Commissioner role took place that they were going to employ somebody from outside of the State? If that was the case, it wasn’t a fair competition.”

Kenny said he has received a response from current Commissioner Justin Kelly, telling him that his request in relation to the timeline of the lease has been shared with the gardaí’s operations team and that they will respond in due course. 

Meanwhile, Kenny’s party colleague TD Alan Kelly said it is “shocking” that the whole affair has been “kept quiet for seven years”. 

“Ordinary Garda members are outraged. They cannot afford rent, they cannot afford to live where they work, they are sleeping in cars between shifts and many are commuting long distances or leaving the force because they simply cannot make ends meet,” he said. 

Earlier this week, Mark Ferris – a serving officer and member of the executive committee of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) – said the deal would have insulated Harris from the cost-of-living crisis faced by his officers. 

Ferris particularly took issue with the deal because of the hardline approach Harris had taken on industrial relations issues within the gardaí in recent years, noting that it came at a time when ordinary members of the force were left “demoralised” and “fighting for basic pay and roster fairness”.