THE MAJORITY OF gardaí who have been temporarily transferred to Louth to address resourcing issues are coming from the most depleted division in the country.

It was confirmed in recent days that the Emergency Response Unit and 27 gardaí have been deployed to Louth in response to the murder of Garda Tony Golden. Most of them have been sent to Dundalk.

Now it has emerged that 16 of these additional gardaí are coming from the Cavan/Monaghan division, which suffered the largest depletion (22%) in garda numbers since the moratorium on recruitment.

‘Overworked and overstretched’

GRA representative for the division, James Morrisroe, told TheJournal.ie that no one is suggesting additional resources are not needed in Dundalk but this move has now left his district in an even worse state than it was before.

“I absolutely accept Dundalk are totally understaffed and probably need two or three times what’s being sent but what’s happening is they’re begging off Peter to pay Paul,” he said.

Who’s going to do the work of the 16 that are gone now? They’re already overworked and overstretched.

Vulnerable

Though he said the Louth area is busier in terms of cross-border crime, “criminality on the border doesn’t stop at Dundalk”.

Officers in the Cavan/Monaghan division are also dealing with gangs moving across the border and the related criminal activity. Now this move has left them feeling “vulnerable and exposed”, he added.

The problem comes down to a failure to recruit adequate numbers of new gardaí according to the GRA representative, with overall numbers down from 14,500 in 2010 to around 12,000 now.

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