About 270 garda\u00ed were off duty every day last year because of accidents, road traffic crashes, and assaults suffered while on the job.<\/p>\n
New figures show a sharp rise in the number of garda\u00ed missing work due to injuries suffered at work.<\/p>\n
Overall, members of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na took almost 270,000 sick days last year \u2014 the equivalent of about 740 a day.<\/p>\n
The number of days lost to illness rose nearly 5% compared to 2024, when the figure was just over 257,000.<\/p>\n
There was, however, a 17% climb in sick leave taken by garda\u00ed who suffered accidental injuries on duty.<\/p>\n
Altogether, almost 71,000 days were lost in that category, with a further 8,129 days of illness due to road traffic incidents at work.<\/p>\n
More than 19,000 sick days were taken as a result of malicious injuries suffered on duty, figures released under Freedom of Information show.<\/p>\n
There were 36,500 days lost to critical illness and 38,500 days attributed to flu or other viral illnesses, including covid-19.<\/p>\n
Mental health accounted for nearly 1,600 lost days. However, that figure was down substantially compared to 2024.<\/p>\n
About 5,800 sick days were taken for musculoskeletal issues and 8,305 for surgery, or post-operative recovery.<\/p>\n
An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na also logged 1,037 days of leave for post-pregnancy and 5,063 for pregnancy-related illness or unavailability for work.<\/p>\n
There were about 67,500 days of sickness that were categorised either as \u201cnot provided\u201d, or \u201cother\u201d in the records.<\/p>\n
Asked about the data, a Garda spokesman said while the total number of sick days had increased, much of that was attributable to injuries on duty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis reflects the unpredictable and dangerous nature of frontline duties undertaken by garda\u00ed nationwide on a daily basis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The spokesman said there had also been a notable increase in absence due to critical illness, which often involved lengthy periods of sickness for a smaller number of garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
A fall in mental health-related absence was also evident, while figures for ordinary sickness tended to \u201cfluctuate on a day-to-day basis”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 270 garda\u00ed were off duty every day last year because of accidents, road traffic crashes, and assaults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1111,103,61,60,43,1112],"class_list":["post-413940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-court-and-crime","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-politics-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}