It has come to light that the Garda unit responsible for examining deadly road accidents is staffed at less than half the level recommended by its own roads policing specialists, reports The Mirror.
At the annual Garda Representative Association (GRA) conference—which speaks for around 11,200 officers—delegates were told that these specialist investigators are being dispatched nationwide, including one case where an officer traveled from Tipperary to the far north of Donegal.
During Tuesday’s session, it was revealed that the National Roads Policing Bureau has set a target of 24 forensic collision investigators, yet only 11 are currently employed, reports The Mirror.
Because of this shortfall, the specially trained officers are struggling under a massive caseload and are unable to offer the standard of service they aim to deliver. The association is now urging that more investigators be hired.
Garda Shane Bonner, based in south central Dublin and representing the Forensic Collision Investigators (FCIs) at Dublin Castle’s roads policing division, stressed the urgent need to address the issue.
He said: “We’re seeing a huge shortage of FCIs, the forensic collision investigators in the organisation at the moment.. We’re falling really, really short in what we’re doing and what the service that the Garda Siochana are providing. People are waiting for answers. We have a fatal accident, and people are waiting for the answers… They want to know what happened, how it happened. The outcomes. The workload is so heavy at the moment on the FCIS that they’re snowed under. We have 11 FCIs in the country at the moment. There’s a Garda Roads Policing Bureau recommendation of a minimum of 24,” reports The Mirror.
He also pointed out that one investigator had handled 18 fatal crash cases in a year—three times the expected workload.
He further revealed that a recruitment process for new FCIs had unexpectedly collapsed without explanation being given to applicants.
He said: “We had a competition which collapsed because, well, we don’t really know why. It just stopped. Management sent out a quick note to the people that were in it, saying, ‘Sorry, this competition hasn’t met standards, and we’ve stopped it.’ We have our 11 FCIs that have been dragged all over the country. We’re potentially losing evidence. We’re leaving scenes closed for longer. We’re not doing the best that we can, we aren’t giving the service that we need to be giving. The reason for that is very simple: Garda management. The commissioner isn’t giving us the FCIs. It’s been run into the ground,” reports The Mirror.
Garda Chris O’Mara, stationed in Tipperary and also an FCI, told the conference that he had been the sole expert available nationwide to respond to a fatal incident—prompting his assignment to north Donegal, over 300 kilometres away.
He said: “It was Saturday morning when I got the call. I could have got in the car there and then and gone, but I would have been then arriving into a dark scene, which would have made the investigation difficult or impossible, depending on the scenario that I would have encountered,” reports The Mirror.
Garda Christopher O’Mara revealed he was sent from Tipperary to north Donegal to investigate a fatal road crash.
Instead, I left at three o’clock in the morning. I arrived there for first light.
“I did the investigation over the course of the day, and finished it around four o’clock that day. The collision had occurred at 10 o’clock on the Friday night, and it was Sunday morning, half seven, I think by the time I arrived at the scene. I was told I was the only investigator available in the country,” reports The Mirror.
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