Killybegs gardai in Co Donegal are to have a temporary new home in the local parish priest's house. Father Lorcan Sharkey has agreed to allow the parochial house to become a Garda station, because of the Third World conditions in the official premises.
Conditions at Muff Garda station, also in Co Donegal, are just as bad, the Dail was told. So bad in fact that the local sergeant and two gardai walked out of the station last week because of fears for their health and safety. A temporary structure has since been provided.
A local TD and Fine Gael's spokesman on the arts and heritage, Mr Dinny McGinley, said the Muff station was condemned in the 1970s as unfit for human habitation. Conditions in the station, built 100 years ago, were Dickensian, he said, and he asked how any Minister or Government could justify such standards.
"The station is a two-storey building, but only one downstairs room can be safely used. The only toilet in the building is located in an upstairs room which is dangerous to enter, and the remainder of the building is crumbling from rising and descending damp and dry rot."
The Muff gardai threatened a walkout in November but stopped when promised urgent attention to the problem, which did not occur. "It is a disgrace to the State that gardai should be obliged to operate out of a derelict building," said Mr McGinley, who raised the issue on the adjournment earlier this week.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Tom Moffatt, who replied for Mr O'Donoghue, said the Minister for Justice "acknowledges that the standard of accommodation in some stations is less than ideal".
But since 1998 more than £51 million had been allocated for work on Garda properties. Many Garda buildings had been created before the foundation of the State and designed for a different era. This created its own unique maintenance and refurbishment demands.
