THE Garda Siochana's contribution to international peacekeeping is one of the force's best kept secrets. At present, 48 officers are serving in former Yugoslavia, Western Sahara, Cyprus, Tajikistan and the Middle East.
But it is unlikely they will ever feature in national media unless an officer is kidnapped or worse.
The Garda role in helping to police UN missions is, however, significant in international peacekeeping terms.
Chief Supt Stephen Fanning, retired, was the first UN police commissioner and the architect of UN policing policy.
He set up the policing operation in the UN mission in Namibia to assist transition from South African satellite to independence in 1979.
Namibia was one of the UN's major successes and the policing operation was its most important element.
Stephen Fanning's policing structure, since adopted in all UN policing operations, resembles the Garda Siochana model. There are divisional, district and station officers here at home and wherever the UN sets up a police force to assist in a transition from war and chaos to order and democracy.
Fanning's UN successor is Peter Fitzgerald, Garda assistant commissioner in charge of training and development. He served with Fanning in Namibia and has since held senior UN posts in Cambodia, El Salvador and now, as commissioner, in charge of a force of 1,700 police officers in former Yugoslavia. It is the biggest current UN policing operation.
Fitzgerald has become probably the most important figure in UN policing. He was chief of operations for the 3,500 strong UN police force in Cambodia, the largest policing operation undertaken by the UN. He has also served with the UN in its first police mission in Namibia and played an important advisory role in the UN ceasefire and decommissioning operation in Central America.
He flew to Bosnia on Thursday to meet Kofi Annon, the UN under secretary and ambassadors from the nations participating in the UN policing mission. He takes up his post as commissioner at the end of the month.
In the coming year, his force will be spread throughout former Yugoslavia, helping to reestablish proper policing and supporting the UN Human Rights Commission.
The former Yugoslavia mission is extraordinarily complex. Apart from the daunting and dangerous role set for it, the UN police force has its own built in problems. Between 25 and 30 nations are contributing police officers.
It will take an extremely capable leader to maintain discipline and ensure that the officers, from two dozen cultures with maybe a dozen languages, do their work.
So it was to Fitzgerald, a native of Tramore, Co Waterford, that UNHQ in New York turned for the Yugoslavia job.
HE IS among a cadre of Irish Defence Force and Garda officers who appear to come into their own when thrown into chaotic, dangerous positions in far flung parts of the world. He follows a long line of Irish servicemen and women who have established reputations in the history of the UN.
In Cambodia, Fitzgerald stood out among the crowd in south east Asia with his impressive six feet three inch frame and white hair, earning him the nickname "Silver Fox". He appeared in television pictures escorting a British soldier freed from Khmer bandits.
His other moment of national media attention arose when Gerry Collins, then Minister for Justice, sang his praises on returning from Namibia's independence celebrations. In the press of bodies around the VIP terrace, Nelson Mandela was in danger of being crushed and Peter Fitzgerald held back the over enthusiastic spectators throughout the ceremony.
The incident has improved in the retelling. He is still referred to by gardai as the man who saved the future first black South African president's life by shouldering up a collapsing grandstand for three hours. In more prosaic terms, some say he is the man who saved Gerry Collins's life with a similar act.
There is, as Fitzgerald is known to point out to colleagues, a considerable amount of rubbish spoken about the incident. He made no public comment on it and is unlikely to in the future.
He is married and lives with his wife, Eilis, and the youngest of their three children in Dublin. His eldest daughter is a lawyer in Brussels and his son is at the Garda College.
Former colleagues in the Dublin stations where he served the greatest part of his Garda career still speak well of him. In their terms, he is a native of Pearse Street station. He moved from there to the Crime Task Force in Dublin Castle in the late 1970s and then back to Pearse Street as station sergeant.
He was promoted inspector and moved across the Liffey to Fitzgibbon Street in 1983, then as assistant superintendent to Store Street.
His promotion to superintendent required a transfer to a country division, to Cahir, Co Tipperary. Colleagues recollect that the change from the hectic life of a big city centre station to rural Garda life was maybe not to his taste. He volunteered for his first UN mission and moved from Cahir to Ovamboland on the border between Angola and Namibia.
His next UN mission also followed another rural transfer, this time as chief superintendent to Sligo. After three months in Sligo, he moved to Cambodia.
Colleagues joke that it is the prospect of another rural posting, among the hatch of Garda regional commanders to be announced next week, that has driven him to former Yugoslavia.