Ten gardai paid EUR465,000 for overtime work

A Dublin garda earned €57,000 in overtime last year, new figures show. A prison officer based at Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, earned almost €80,000 in overtime in 2002.

Figures obtained from the Department of Justice reveal that Dublin gardaí have consistently been the highest overtime earners.

However, that trend has shifted this year with the escalation of crime in Limerick. Figures for the first six months of 2003 show that six Limerick gardaí made it into the top 10 garda overtime earners.

While prison officers' overtime payments have been the subject of scrutiny in recent years, this is the first time figures for Garda overtime have been disclosed

The figures show that the top 10 Garda overtime earners in 2002 received a total of €465,000 between them.

The highest amount of overtime was €56,824, followed by €52,028, €51,384, €49,278, and €46,437. All 10 highest overtime earners were based in Dublin - nine of them were at Garda rank and one was a sergeant.

Meanwhile, the 10 prison officers receiving the highest overtime payments last year received a total of €670,000.

The highest earner was an officer at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin who received €79,440. Two officers in Portlaoise Prison earned €76,186 and €69,037 in overtime respectively.

The annual overtime payments to members of the Garda Síochána and the Prison Service have increased significantly in the last five years.

In 1998 the top overtime earner in the prison service was an officer at Mountjoy, who earned €61,646, almost €20,000 less than the highest payment within the service last year. In 1998 the highest overtime earner within the Garda was a Dublin-based garda who was paid €44,151, almost €12,000 less than the highest overtime recipient in the force last year.

In the first six months of 2003, a Limerick-based Garda inspector earned €28,295 in overtime, followed by two Limerick colleagues of garda rank, who earned €24,555 and €23,572 in the same period.

Prison officers from Portlaoise and Mountjoy were, once again, paid the most overtime in the Prison Service in the first six months of this year. One officer at Portlaoise was paid €41,812 in the six-month period, followed by officers from Mountjoy and Portlaoise, who earned €41,752 and €40,859 respectively between January and June.

The Prison Officers' Association is currently balloting its members on an offer from the prison service, which would annualise hours and cut the annual overtime bill within the service.

The officers have been offered an annual payment of around €10,000 in exchange for working up to 360 non-rostered hours per year. The payment would be made even if the hours are not worked. It would reduce by more than 85 per cent the amount of overtime being earned at present by the highest earning officers.

It is believed much of the Garda overtime is earned by detectives, who are required to react to investigations as they unfold, in comparison to uniformed officers whose hours are more regular. The overtime payments to gardaí are paid in respect of time spent travelling to and from different parts of the State conducting investigations. The payments also include time spent in court.