An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na failed to provide auditors with approval records for overtime payments despite repeated requests for the documents.<\/p>\n
A review of a \u20ac201 million annual overtime bill found supporting paperwork was unavailable in 45 of 67 cases selected for testing.<\/p>\n
The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) found examples where members were paid for more hours than were authorised.<\/p>\n
In two cases, more than 50 hours of overtime was paid without the required approval from a senior officer.
Ten payments could not be examined after An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na failed to organise a meeting requested on several occasions by the C&AG.<\/p>\n
The audit said: “A meeting with members of the [garda] team to carry out elements of the testing, including overtime approval, was not arranged despite a number of requests to do so.”<\/p>\n
The report said the system created a risk of errors, overpayments or the misappropriation of public funds.<\/p>\n
It said there was no overarching policy on overtime in place even as costs involved had more than doubled in the space of five years.<\/p>\n
From 2023 to 2024, costs increased from \u20ac184m to \u20ac201m, a rise of 11%.<\/p>\n
During its examination, the C&AG found three cases where garda\u00ed received more money than was approved.<\/p>\n
It found multiple instances of sergeants signing off overtime for other sergeants, and a case where an inspector cleared paperwork for colleagues of the same rank.<\/p>\n
The report also found “instances where members booked other members in and out of their tour of duty in the absence of appropriate approval from a more senior rank”.<\/p>\n
The C&AG also reported it had sought access to An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na’s internal system for monitoring overtime.<\/p>\n
However, access was denied due to the limitations of the system and because audit staff were not trained in how to use it.<\/p>\n
The garda roster and duty management system also could not determine which overtime resulted from illness or other staff absences.<\/p>\n
The C&AG said An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na needed to review its policies and procedures for managing attendance and overtime.<\/p>\n
It said this would help “ensure they are applied accurately and consistently across the organisation in order to mitigate any processing errors on payroll”.<\/p>\n
A garda response said significant consultation had taken place, and it was anticipated that new policy and procedure would be implemented during 2026.<\/p>\n
It said during 2025, there had been “considerable focus on the drivers and costing of overtime”.<\/p>\n
Its response added that work had taken place to manage the “cost-effective deployment” of garda members during the EU Presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na failed to provide auditors with approval records for overtime payments despite repeated requests for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-580385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580385","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=580385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}