In an interview on RTÉ radio’s This Week programme last January, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee agreed it was “not ideal” that the second most senior policing role in the State had to be filled on a temporary basis as no candidate had been nominated, following a competition.
The comments were very much an understatement.
Two days earlier a submission sent from the office of the Department of Justice secretary general to a Government-appointed review group had set out the serious alarm being felt by senior officials.
“It goes without saying that this situation is a cause for real concern to the Department and to the Government,” it said.
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No career gardaí in the most senior ranks had applied for the post of deputy commissioner. The Irish Times reported that the only qualified applicants were police officers from outside the State – the US, Britain and Northern Ireland.
The then Independent TD and former Army Ranger Cathal Berry had earlier raised concerns that a person born outside the jurisdiction could end up being in charge of State security due to the recruitment problems.
McEntee insisted in the interview she would never agree to anything that would jeopardise Irish security, but just two days earlier her department came very close to expressing the same worries as Berry.
“From the department’s point of view, given the responsibility of the most senior gardaí for national security, it is not desirable that the pool of applicants (for senior roles) should reduce to non-Garda officers. That is now a real prospect,” it said.
The issue the department was highlighting was that of tax implications for those with large pension pots. Under Government rules in place since 2014, those with more than €2 million in their funds would be subject to a chargeable excess tax of 40 per cent – leaving them facing a potential liability of hundreds of thousands of euro.
Six Garda assistant commissioners had told the Minister late last year that for every month they continued to serve, their tax liability increased by €5,000. If they had secured promotion to the deputy commissioner role, their tax bill on retirement would be substantially higher.
If left unchanged, the likelihood was that the pension tax charge would embrace larger numbers of staff further down the ladder across the public service.
Principal officer grades in the Civil Service were also coming close to reaching the €2 million pension taxation threshold.
However, the issue also shone a light on the value of pensions for senior figures in the public service in comparison with the private sector. Central Bank data in the summer indicated that on average the pension pot of private sector workers was just over €80,000.
Public service pay has increased steadily since the cuts of a decade or so ago. And as pensions are largely linked to remuneration, if the tax threshold was not amended, more State employees would be brought into its net.
[ Pension fund assets hit five-year high as member numbers also riseOpens in new window ]
The department believed that chief superintendent gardaí would soon be liable for the tax. It was concerned that without amendment, the pension tax regime “will reach deeper into the organisation with potentially disastrous consequences for the filling of these key posts”.
There was much commentary earlier this year about senior gardaí not applying for the deputy commissioner role.
However, the real fear in the department was that senior gardaí were on the verge of quitting and those in the ranks below could be dissuaded from seeking promotion.
“From the department’s viewpoint, any such exodus would be detrimental to the policing and security of the State, in its own right. It would be far worse if those coming behind them were not to apply for those vacancies, if they were to arise.
“The Department is also conscious of the marketability of senior gardaí. Recently retired senior officers are employed in a number of public and private sector organisations at senior level. The threat to retire/resign is not viewed by the department, or indeed the commissioner, as an empty one.”
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