Anger at speed and cost of new Garda stations
Five-star hotels are being built quicker and cheaper than local garda stations, the country’s largest garda union body said today.
The Garda Representative Association (GRA), which has 10,000 members, said more than 100 garda stations need to be replaced, extended or refurbished.
Up to 30 current priority cases include Dunmanway, Ballinhassig, Ballymun, Finglas, Wexford, Scotstown in Co Monaghan and Mill Street in Galway city.
GRA spokesman Owen Connell today criticised the slow progress and the poor value for money being delivered by the building programme run by Office of Public Works (OPW)
“Progress on our building programme is too slow, cumbersome and bureaucratic and too costly,” Mr Connell today told the Irish Conference of Professional and Service Association. (ICPSA).
The GRA tabled a motion at the ICPSA conference in Mullingar calling on Justice Minister Michael McDowell to remove responsibility over the Garda Building Programme from the OPW.
He said: “The OPW on its own admission has stated that when they arrive in town the cost of property there takes a jump. This again adds to the cost of building new stations and questions the value we get for our money.”
Mr Connell, who sits on the GRA’s accommodation committee, also questioned the quality of some of the work being done and mentioned Monaghan Garda Station, built in the 1980s.
“All of the windows were deemed to be unsafe. A considerable amount of money was spent on these windows so that they could be opened and closed as normal windows,” he said.
The GRA said the Garda Building Programme was allocated €27.5m in 2004 but conditions are getting worse in stations on a daily basis.
“It is our considered opinion in the GRA that to build a basic garda station at present is costing more per square metres than it would cost to build and fit a five-star hotel. That speaks for itself,” Mr Connell added.
