This week saw the 2014 Garda Representative Association annual conference in Killarney. The following are some of the issues raised:
- Minister for Justice Alan Shatter was not invited to the meeting
- Calls for the introduction of Tasers
- Training in firearms should be given to gardaí
- Fears over below level recruitment and lack of resources
- Drugs shipments were ‘slipping the net’ due to resource limitations
- Gardaí want the powers to detain drunk persons in Garda stations until they have sobered up
- A change of uniform
- GRA General Secretary PJ Stone said he believed former Commissioner Martin Callinan had been sacked as a result of politics
- Stone also called for the establishment of an independent police body with a much reduced role for the DoJ and the Minister for Justice in appointment of Commissioners and promotion of garda – thereby severing politics from policing
- Calls for legislation to put an end to the need to write interviews down when they were being electronically recorded
- Publication of garda assault figures annually to highlight it as a serious issue
- GRA backed Interim Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan for the permanent post of Commissioner
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