AN GARDA SÍOCHÁNA paid out nearly €370,000 last year to buy centenary medals for presentation to nearly 15,000 officers and staff members.

The special medals were coined to celebrate one hundred years of the police force with the items manufactured by MMI, a specialist company based in Dublin.

The force also spent nearly €60,000 on private school fees for the children of officers that are serving abroad and just over €20,000 on the hosting of a garda conference at the Grand Hotel in Malahide.

The details are contained in a spreadsheet of more than €200 million worth of garda expenditure last year, which was released under FOI.

It shows the highest area of spending was in ICT services, where bills totalled more than €71 million while at least €37 million was paid out for garda uniforms.

There was also expenditure of €13.5 million on new vehicles, €3.4 million for vehicle storage and towing, and bills of €9 million and €3.6 million for the operation of the country’s speed camera network.

Other smaller bills included €283,000 for marketing services, €131,000 for market research, expenditure of €164,000 on barrier hire, and just under €97,000 on conference fees.

An Garda Síochána said they had spent around €210,000 on education, which included a sum of €22,736 paid to one private school and €37,433 to another, both of them in continental Europe.

There was also nearly €150,000 paid out to UCD for a variety of higher education courses for garda officers and staff.

They said a sum of €28,501 had been spent on a youth diversion conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Athlone in May of 2022, which included meeting rooms, catering, and room charges.

However, An Garda Síochána redacted all breakdown of the individual items included on the bill saying it was commercially sensitive.

A bill from the Grand Hotel in Malahide for another event was similarly redacted, but the overall total of €20,411 included meeting rooms, bed and breakfast packages, dining, and various other miscellaneous costs.

Other items in the garda expenditure files included €49,800 for Covid-19 antigen tests, €521,000 for new special “rip stop” uniform trousers, €50,820 to Iarnród Eireann for services listed as “travel pass”, and around €83,000 for archive boxes.