New armed Garda unit will begin in June, says Garda Commissioner

The new armed Regional Support Unit will be in place within two months and will contribute to the armed policing response some members of the Garda Representative Association are seeking, said Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan.

She made her comments as delegates at the GRA's annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, questioned whether maintaining the force as an unarmed one was realistic in the face of violent crime and the threat from international terrorism.

Some delegates at the conference will today call for more armed back-up nationwide on a 24-hour basis.

When asked about the demands after attending an unrelated session of the Policing Authority in Dublin yesterday afternoon, Ms O'Sullivan said the promised new RSU for Dublin would have its 55 members in place and be operational by June.

She said gardaí also had pepper spray and the asp baton to aid them in dealing with violent situations.

Ms O’Sullivan said Operation Thor introduced last November had resulted in a sharp decline in property crime, with burglaries decreasing this year by a third compared with the same period last year.

“Operation Thor has seen over 13,000 people arrested, over 16,000 people charged and we’ve seen a historic low in property crime,” she said.

Part of the Garda’s function was to reassure the public that crime was being tackled, and there was a range of high-visibility policing constantly under way across the State with that in mind.

Significant investment

There had also been significant investment in the Garda fleet which had aided the deployment of additional high-visibility patrols aimed at frustrating criminal gangs which used major roads to commit crimes in one part of the country and quickly escaped to another region.

Static patrols in the shape of checkpoints were also detecting criminals and reassuring the public, whose trust the Garda had to “earn and maintain”.

While some Garda stations had closed down, text alert systems were very active in rural Ireland, Ms O'Sullivan said.