Ireland would not have a properly-constituted police force until women were admitted. This was the contention of a group which sought, 52 years ago, to break down the gender-barrier to membership of the Garda Síochána.
In a detailed memorandum in 1950 to an official committee of inquiry into the future of the Garda Síochána, the Dublin-based Joint Committee of Women's Societies and Social Workers said a corps of women police was "a social service urgently needed".
"The need is based on two well-established facts: (1) Women are best to deal with women. (2) Women are best to deal with children. Women police would not encroach on the work of the men."
Having detailed the kind of duties where women would be more suitable, the memorandum noted that the all-male jury system of the day provided another reason for women police: "As there are now no women on the juries, a woman prisoner in the dock, or as victim in the case, may be the only one of her sex in the Court." The submission added: "Women police in innumerable instances save girls from following an immoral life and put them on the way to becoming good citizens."
The document, contained in newly-released official files, pointed out that there were women police in the US, Australia, Britain and China. "Before the war there was a magnificent women police corps in Poland." This was not the first submission from the Joint Committee: it had previously sent a scheme to the Minister for Justice in 1936.
The initial cost would be offset by the results obtained: "Apart from the cost, what is right to be done should be done." For a start, there should be 25 women police in Dublin and two dozen more in population centres throughout the State and they should be paid the same as their male colleagues.
The Joint Committee also submitted a letter it had received from the chief superintendent of women police at Scotland Yard who pointed out that there were between 1,200 and 1,300 women on the beat in England and Wales. "The advantage of women police," the letter stated, "is of having trained women in the force, working as colleagues with the men on general police duties, and specialising in those duties for which a woman is better suited."
Women were finally admitted to the Garda Síochána in 1959.