New talks planned on Garda reserve

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is to hold new talks with all Garda staff associations from next week in an attempt to break the deadlock over his plans to implement a reserve force.

Plans for the fresh round of negotiations came about after Mr McDowell last week wrote to the staff associations requesting meetings with them.

The Association of Garda Superintendents and Association of Chief Superintendents will both meet Mr McDowell next week. It will be the first time that those organisations have held formal talks with the Minister on the reserve force plans.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) and Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (Agsi) have also indicated their willingness to meet Mr McDowell and his officials on March 22nd and 23rd.

However, sources in both organisations insisted that the development should not be interpreted as a softening in their opposition to plans for the reserve force.

One source said it was difficult to see what Mr McDowell believed could be achieved by holding talks as both the GRA and Agsi remained "totally opposed to the reserve in any shape or form".

The GRA and Agsi on Monday in Portlaoise, Co Laois, held the last of three regional meetings staged jointly by both organisations to outline to their members why they should oppose the Garda reserve force.

A spokesman for the GRA said more than 3,000 members, or one-third of the force, had attended the meetings in Sligo, Cork and Portlaoise. A large attendance was expected at the final meeting in Dublin, the date of which has not yet been confirmed.

Mr McDowell will address the annual conferences of the GRA and Agsi next month and in May in Galway and Kerry. Those conferences will hear numerous motions for a policy of non-co-operation with the reserve force, a move that would make it unworkable.

In its current form members of the reserve will only be allowed work under the supervision of fulltime members. If members of the GRA and Agsi refuse to co-operate it is unclear how the mooted reserve force could operate.

Mr McDowell will be anxious to make progress on the issue before the coming annual conferences and current positions become any more entrenched. Under his plans the Garda reserve would become operational by September.

It is envisaged it would have 900 members when it begins, increasing to 4,000.

Mr McDowell wants these to engage in a variety of activities that, he believes, would free up full-time members for frontline duties. However, both the GRA and Agsi have said the force amounts to amateur policing by poorly trained reservists.

They fear it will attract members who will join in order to target their neighbours. They also believe fulltime members will be called on to "babysit" reservists and deal with the fall out from "botched arrests" and other mishaps.