Harris wastes little time in getting to grips with engrained Garda problems
IT HAS been a busy first three weeks for new Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Prior to moving into the Phoenix Park headquarters, he briefed himself up to date on the crises and controversies that resulted in the resignations of his two predecessors.
And from day one he has hit the organisation by storm, fitting in visits to Garda stations as well as getting to grips with running the day-to-day business of the force.
He also found time to make it clear to the representative associations, who welcomed his appointment with open arms, that he would not be a soft touch when it came to budgets and intended to oversee a review of how existing money in the purse was being spent before determining whether he should go to the Government to seek more.
He didn’t need to look very far to realise that spending on overtime was way out of kilter with projections for the year.
He chaired his first senior management meeting, with money the only item on the agenda, at the Phoenix Park on Monday last week and then held another in Ballymun last Friday.
The outcome was the announcement two days ago that the current overtime spend had to be curtailed by around 30pc between now and the end of the year.
So far this year, the force has spent €20m more than its overtime budget of €90m and this will increase to €30m without implementing cutbacks. This will bring down the overtime spend per roster – there are 13 rosters in the year – from €9m to between €6.5m and €7m, compared with €8m per roster in 2017.
Mr Harris is also facing the problem of requiring a supplementary budget to meet running costs for the rest of 2018.
And he has to convince officials from the Department of Public Expenditure that he is taking action to curb the overtime, which was meant to drop this year as a result of extra gardaí being available on the streets through recruitment.
The provision of a supplementary budget for the Garda has become an annual event around this time of the year and underlines the futility of successive governments failing to provide sufficient funds.
The finances of the force can only be run efficiently when the need for overtime has been eliminated, apart from special circumstances, by boosting the strength of the Garda and providing budgets that will last for a year rather than nine months.
Another area he has to review is the decision to fund the cost of parading time, a 15-minute briefing period for gardaí before the start of their shift, from the overtime budget. This should be covered in the overall pay allocation but was moved into the overtime spend as part of the Haddington Road pay agreement and now accounts for an estimated 20pc of that budget, while another 20pc to 30pc is lost on court duties.
So almost half of what should be spent on operations is used up by non-core duties.
Earlier in the week, Mr Harris was given a glimpse of what his force might look like towards the end of his term of office with the publication of the Commission on the Future of Policing report.
Like most, he will welcome many of the recommendations and, no doubt, his senior management team will be relieved at the move towards a reduction in oversight bodies as the leadership is snowed under by the amount of paperwork.
He will now keenly await the response of Government and discover whether this time the politicians intend to implement the proposed comprehensive reform of the force or simply consign the report to the groaning shelf of tomes.