This monthly review is prepared by General Secretary, John Jacob
Meeting with Deputy Operations
AGSI had two meetings in April with Deputy Commissioner Operations, the first on the 4th of April. There were three issues raised at this meeting; the payment of subsistence to members for St. Patricks Day and the Easter Commemorations; the ongoing issue of filling vacancies on a temporary basis and the difficulties this causes for our members; and the issue of the possibility of reassignment of people within the specialist sections as a result of the relocation of Harcourt Square to disparate locations.Correspondence was issued in relation to the subsistence matter and hopefully everyone was properly compensated for their time. The issues around insecurity in posts and reassignment of people was clearly outlined to the Deputy who agreed these were issues that needed to be examined. The Deputy undertook to do some research in relation to these matters and we will discuss them again with him in due course. I would hope we will progress these matters quickly for everyone’s sake.The second meeting took place after our annual delegate conference. The Deputy was anxious that AGSI would keep the lines of communication open with Senior Garda Management. He indicated that the Commissioner was keen to engage with AGSI on matters concerning them and that he would make himself available to deal with matters we needed progressing urgently if they were bogged down at Assistant Commissioner level or below. AGSI raised a number of matters including our disappointment that discipline was becoming an industry within the organisation and our members were suffering unduly as a result.The Deputy agreed to look at the area with a view to introducing an alternative process to discipline where they were merited. AGSI will work with the Deputy in this area as we are aware it is a cause of concern for our members.
Briefing re Harcourt Sq Officers Club D/Com O’Cualain
Deputy Commissioner Strategy & Change Management met with National Executive members Mick Hiney and Christy Morrison in relation to the move from Harcourt Square. Unfortunately we are still no further on in identifying the locations for the different sections or when this move will take place.AGSI are anxious to establish a number of groups to identify accommodation requirements for the interim move and for the new build (whenever this will take place). In this regard we wrote to SDU/CDU and DMR South Central to ask them to identify people who would sit on these groups.AGSI continues to press senior Garda Management for information.
ICT Meetings
Two meetings also took place in relation to ICT. One covered IT projects and their status while the second considered the ICT HR strategy. It was agreed that this latter matter, which has been ongoing for the last number of years needed to be referred to a full partnership meeting to discuss how best to progress the key issues of concern to the Associations.
Meeting with Minister for Justice
On the 20th April following Conference our new President Antoinette Cunningham, General Secretary John Jacob, Secretary Donal Smyth and National Executive member Cormac Moylan met the Minister for Justice. The single item agenda was the lack of progress on the Review proposed under Haddington Road. AGSI had specific matters to discuss with the Minister in this regard. We took the opportunity to outline that our Annual Delegate Conference had directed the National Executive to progress a campaign to secure the restoration of pay to 2008 levels, to ensure the Association was given the right to negotiate our own pay and to seek to have the threat of the increment pay freeze removed. We outlined that in line with that direction we would be mounting a campaign on our members behalf.The Minister pointed out that she was holding the post on an interim basis but understood our concerns. She invited us to present our oral submission for exemption from the increment freeze in writing for her to consider. We have since made that submission.
EuroCop Meeting 26/27 April
General Secretary John Jacob attended a EuroCOP conference in Spain. The conference was co-hosted by EuroCOP and the International Council of Police Representative Associations (ICPRA ). This joint meeting saw the largest gathering of police representative bodies ever, representing in the region of 1.5 million police officers.The agenda examined terrorism and a presentation was made by Alrick Martinis from Europol on the terrorist threat facing policing and the urgent need for sharing of information between police forces and security agencies.A presentation was also made by Linda Duxbury Ottawa University and Bo Wennstrom Uppsala University Sweden entitled Policing our People – looking after those looking after the public. The presentation addressed well-being and work related stress. Unsurprisingly the issues facing police elsewhere in the world are very closely aligned to those impacting the Gardaí.Risk Smith, the CEO and founder of Taser International made a presentation on IT integration and the need for an urgent rethink on how we use technology which was very interesting and had very little commercial focus.Mark Lindsay, Chairman of the Police Federation of Norther Ireland presented details of the ‘We Are You’ video campaign to highlight that police men and women are normal people doing a job like no other. The tag line ‘We are You’ highlighted that Police officers are fathers, mothers and granddaughters, just like everyone else and a uniform is the only difference. These short videos have a very strong message and have been very positively received. They can be viewed at the this link: http://www.weareyou.org.uk/.
