GARDAÍ INVESTIGATING GANGLAND crime may soon be working out of prefabs, if the State is unable to find a suitable location to move them to in the coming months.
Over 1,000 staff based at the Dublin Metropolitan region headquarters at Harcourt Square will have to be moved to new offices, as the lease on the building expires this month.
Though it is understood the move has been deferred temporarily, gardaí and civilian employees at the building still have not been told when or where they are going. It is expected that the various units based at the Dublin city centre location, including the fraud squad, the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), drugs and organised crime and the sexual assault unit, will be split up and moved to different locations.
A site in Eastpoint Business Park has been looked at as a possible base for some of the units. Proposals to construct ‘modular buildings’, or prefabs, to house gardaí from the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit have also been discussed. This is the unit tasked with tackling criminal gangs, including those currently involved in the recent feud.
‘Where are we going?’
No plans or proposals for the move are “set in stone”, Michael Kilfeather, Garda Representative Association divisional secretary for Harcourt Square told reporters this week at the organisation’s annual conference.
And for the members he represents, that is the main issue.
We’ve got about, I think, 1,080 people working there from garda, civilians – of all ranks, five to six hundred guards working there. You have some serious investigations going on from there and we’re just trying to work out where are we going, is there a plan, what is it and where are we going to go?
He pointed out that moving certain units, like Computer Crime Investigation, could take months as it would require setting up servers, air conditioning units and other technical facilities.
“If a move takes, physically, maybe a week, two weeks of moving boxes, refiling them, that’s delaying investigations,” he added.
If we knew a time, date, an idea we could plan and act accordingly with our investigations, so at least you know what’s coming down the line.
It is also unclear where the command and control centre, which handles emergency calls, will be transferred to.
Temporary relocation
The longterm plan is to build a new headquarters in Dublin’s city centre, but this is expected to take at least five years – if the money is made available – so affected units will be working out of their new ‘temporary’ offices until that plan is made into a reality.
Ciarán O’Neill, newly-elected GRA president and representative for specialist units at Harcour Square said his organisation has entered a consultation process “at a very late stage” and has a number of concerns it will be raising.
We are concerned in respect of some of the proposed temporary relocation sites and the standard of accommodation that will be provided. We have a particular concern that there is no budget allocation approved for the proposed new development that will permanently house the national specialist units in An Garda Síochána.
Apart from the obvious operational issues in this situation, it is also likely the State will face significant fines for remaining on the premises once the lease is up, as it has been taken over by a company that is hoping to redevelop the site. Fines of up to hundreds of thousands of euro could be imposed, depending on how long the move is delayed.
However the Office of Public Works declined to comment on potential penalties, citing “very sensitive security and commercial issues around this matter”.
The garda press office said “alternative housing sites have been identified and this process is ongoing”.
“Members of staff have been consulted on this process and this has been relayed through relevant representative bodies.”
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