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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Niall O’Connor<\/p>\n
GARDA MANAGEMENT HAS confirmed that they anticipate that just six garda\u00ed will be trained in pursuit driving by the end of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Garda Representative Association (GRA) and Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) along with management from An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na appeared at the Oireachtas justice committee to discuss the issues associated with pursuit training.<\/p>\n
The committee invited the officials to address them in the wake of the deaths of five teenage boys in a crash on the M9 while they were driving against the flow of traffic.<\/p>\n
In August, Justice Minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan said Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly confirmed to him that the pursuit training will begin for the first time this year.<\/p>\n
Three sisters and the seven-year-old son of one of the women were injured when they were hit by the car driven by the young boys.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the hearing the head of Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Denis Ferry and head of training Chief Superintendent Brian Sugrue spoke about the efforts to train garda\u00ed. They confirmed that while 4,000 members of the force were trained in response driving no one is trained in pursuit tactics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sugrue, who is based in Templemore Garda College, said that training of instructors by Devon and Cornwall Police would likely be concluded in November. They would then attempt to begin training garda drivers in pursuit tactics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would expect realistically a single course of six is probably realistic before the end of the year with a broader roll-out then for 2027. At the moment, I don\u2019t have any instructors trained to run that course,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Labour TD Alan Kelly, who asked the question, described the situation as \u201cembarrassing\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added \u201cwe should never have got to the point in this country where we had to go outside the state to do this. I think everybody is of that view. We should never have got to this point. It\u2019s absolutely incredible that we\u2019re at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789510578_752_.png\")
\n Chief Suprintendent Brian Sugrue during the committee hearing. Oireachtas TV<\/p>\n
Oireachtas TV<\/p>\n
Prosecutions<\/p>\n
Earlier, GRA President Niall Hodgins accused the State of bias against garda\u00ed in how the Director of Public Prosecutions decides on charges against members.<\/p>\n
Hodgins was discussing how garda\u00ed are prosecuted for their driving while pursuing cars. The GRA and AGSI have both requested an indemnity in law to protect garda\u00ed who drive in pursuits to reduce their risk of prosecution.<\/p>\n
Hodgins said there are a number of garda\u00ed before the courts in regard to on duty driving.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen your occupation is Garda on a covering report going over to a particular office there that directs prosecutions [DPP], that a particular bar may not be reached, and a decision is made that the courts may decide upon that,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hodgins claimed that in cases in which garda\u00ed are being prosecuted for summary matters at district court level that the State employs junior counsel barristers to prosecute them. He said that this is different from members of the public who will be prosecuted by a garda.<\/p>\n
Both the GRA and the AGSI told the committee that garda\u00ed were facing the invidious scenario that if they pursue they can be prosecuted while if they don\u2019t pursue they then could be found to be breach of their duty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ronan Clogher, General Secretary of AGSI, said that his group had looked for an indemnity from prosecution and separate discipline for driving against the flow of traffic or deciding not to pursue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Damned\u2019<\/p>\n
The issue, Clogher said, is that the garda\u00ed face varying degrees of thresholds in which they must decide in seconds to chase or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re damned if you do and you\u2019re damned if you don\u2019t with this, because people talk about thresholds all the time and levels thresholds of driving, but the Garda doesn\u2019t know when a garda pursuit starts or a spontaneous pursuit starts, maybe someone drives away from them or turns away from them, the Garda doesn\u2019t actually know what the incident is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In his opening remarks Clogher blamed the garda organisation\u2019s lack of interest in pursuit training on an effort to reduce the chance that it would be blamed if a chase went wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AGSI are of the view that the greatest obstacle to tackling the problems surrounding Garda Pursuits is a cultural issue surrounding risk aversion within the Garda Organisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe failure to accept any level of corporate risk surrounding this issue will ultimately create a further digression in the organisation\u2019s ability to effectively tackle this issue,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clogher explained that An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na had consciously shifted the risk from the organisation to individual garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
Both the GRA representatives and AGSI said that they did not expect training of operational garda\u00ed to actually take place this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niall O’Connor GARDA MANAGEMENT HAS confirmed that they anticipate that just six garda\u00ed will be trained in pursuit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[45,265738,42,43,265739,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-625757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-garda-driving","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pursuit-training","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625757","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=625757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}