Garda to open ranks to PSNI officers

RECRUITMENT DRIVES to fill senior positions within An Garda Síochána are for the first time to be open to those working in the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said he “very much welcomes” the opportunity to put the radical new system in place.

“These new regulations mark a truly historical further step in relations between the two forces,” he said.

However, Garda sources were critical of what they saw as a lack of full consultation between Mr Shatter and his officials and the main Garda representative bodies.

The new, more open recruitment system was provided for in the Inter-Governmental Agreement on Policing Co-operation that was signed a decade ago. It resulted from recommendations in the Patten report on policing in the North.

A move to the Republic would be seen as attractive to many senior PSNI officers because the rates of remuneration and expenses are higher in the Garda.

With immediate effect, when vacancies arise in the Garda at the rank of inspector, superintendent, chief superintendent or assistant commissioner, the competitions to fill them will be open to PSNI members as well as serving gardaí. The two most senior ranks in the Garda – deputy garda commissioner and garda commissioner – will still be filled by Government appointment from within the force.

However, if PSNI members were successful in securing any one of the vacancies currently at assistant commissioner level, they would be eligible in the next few years to be appointed by the Government to the position of deputy garda commissioner or garda commissioner.

Until now only those serving as gardaí were eligible to apply for other, more senior, positions in the Garda.

In recent years there have been exchange programmes between the Garda and PSNI. These have facilitated relatively small numbers working for the other force for a period.

However, the scheme unveiled yesterday represents the first time that members of the PSNI could resign from their senior positions in the North in favour of a permanent senior post in the Garda.