A GARDA INSPECTOR has revealed that specialist units created to investigate domestic abuse incidents are so swamped with cases that they cannot carry out their work. 

Brian Downey, a Detective Inspector who is stationed in Dublin, told the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors that the Divisional Protective Services Unit (DPSU) in North Dublin are swamped to such an extent that they cannot fulfil their role. 

“I wish people coming down to conference would know that, that DPSU are not delivering that service because we don’t have capacity,” he said.   

Sergeant Caimin Treacy, of Limerick Division, said separately that Protective Service Units (PSU) were not receiving adequate training. 

The units were established in 2017 and the remit for the initiative was to dedicate specialist investigators to child abuse cases, sexual violence and domestic violence incidents. 

The garda organisation has established a specialist investigation strategy to deal more generally with domestic violence offences. 

Operation Faoiseamh has seen Protective Service Units across the country dealing with a massive increase in reported incidents. 

Deputy Commissioner Shawna Coxon, who previously worked with Toronto Police in Canada, had lauded the advent of the PSU during her address to delegates and said that the units were operating effectively. 

However Downey rubbished that and said that there was a serious problem with the amount of gardaí assigned to the units and that they were not able to deal with the huge workload. 

Downey said he was leading 42 investigations while international best practice, developed by UK police said he should only manage eight at a time. 

“I just want to correct something you said in your speech about DPSUs. I’m in the DMR North, and I’m covering investigations in three districts as an SIO (Senior Investigating Officer).   

“DPSU was set up in Dublin Metropolitan Region North over one year ago. We’re only going about a year and a half. The Minster (of Justice Helen McEntee) made the same mistake in November.

“She said we have all these DPSUs now and it’s great that they’re actually dealing with domestic violence,” he said. 

Downey added that this was not the case and wished to inform the conference of the reality on the ground. 

He said a recent Garda Inspectorate review examined the case load of domestic abuse in recent weeks. Downey explained this was designed to discover the service delivery, the investigating methods and interaction with victims. 

“”As part of that review, we asked the DPSU how many domestic abuse cases they were investigating. The answer was nil. Absolutely none.

“Because before the DPSU was set up we had child protection units and they were all the sexual investigations in relation to children. 

“What happened when DPSU was set up, all of those cases went to DPSU. So they simply do not have the capacity to investigate domestic abuse or respond to domestic abuse.

“They’re investigating all the child sexual abuse cases, all of the rape cases, and the only domestic abuse cases they’ll take is a case maybe involving a rape within the domestic area. But then that becomes a rape investigation,” he added. 

The solution has been to send the overflow of investigations back to District Detective Units for investigation because the specialist units can not complete them. He said these cases include 510 Tusla investigation referrals from social workers. 

“All of the crimes in relation to domestic abuse, coercive control, an awful lot of rapes, historical rapes, are now being sent back from DPSU to the detective units,” he added. 

Deputy Commissioner Coxon’s response was brief and claimed it would be corrected by new appointments to the units.  

“I do know with respect to SIOs, I know that situation has been dire, so I certainly hope, it should be corrected with the new promotional process.  

“But I do know that it’s about capacity and what you can do. So if it’s about a name change that isn’t working functionally, I thank you, we need to look at that,” she said.