Army plays down prospect of soldiers doing Garda duties

The Defence Forces and Government have both played down the prospect of soldiers being sent on to the streets of Ireland in the event of gardaí going on strike next month.

Permanent Defence Force Other Ranks Representative Association (PDFORRA) general secretary Gerry Rooney said on Tuesday that the 7,000 members of the representative association do not want to be used by the Government in a strike-breaking role if the Garda Representative Association (GRA) members go on strike, but he did not expect the situation to arise where soldiers would replace gardaí in their roles.

“It happened before in 1998 during the ‘Blue Flu’, when there was a lot of speculation about the army being used to replace gardaí but the Government assured us that the members of the Defence Forces would only be to provide an emergency service and not to replicate the entire service,” said Mr Rooney.

He pointed out that members of the Defence Forces had provided emergency cover previously during strikes by ambulance personnel and fire fighters, but they had never attempted to provide a full replacement service for either group.

And Mr Rooney said he was not sure of the exact nature of the emergency cover that PDFORRA members would be expected to provide in the event of a Garda strike, but he did not believe it would come to that as the GRA itself had indicated that its members would provide emergency cover.

However, if it did come to pass that PDFORRA members were asked to provide emergency cover for striking gardaí then they would do so as they would not disobey orders as it would be an offence under military law to do so, said Mr Rooney.

“If they [the Government] feel they are going to break the garda associations and say we are going to use the army to do it, we would be entirely unhappy to be drawn into an industrial conflict like that, but every soldier will obey his orders – there’s no question of orders being refused.”

Mr Rooney was speaking at the PDFORRA Annual General Conference in Cork where Minister with Responsibility for Defence Paul Kehoe also moved to play down the idea that troops might be deployed to replace striking gardai.

"If Frances Fitzgerald as Minister for Justice and Tánaiste feels they need assistance, it's up to her to make that decision, but I don't envisage that happening," said Mr Kehoe. "I would encourage the GRA to go back to talks and Minister Fitzgerald has been very generous in that she wants to see GRA back in talks."