THE dispute over Garda representation almost led to a walkout by officers in the Technical Bureau during a visit this week by the Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, according to Garda sources.
Officers serving in the fingerprint section considered making a protest because no representative of the breakaway Garda Federation was invited to a ceremony to inaugurate a computerised fingerprint system. The federation represents all but one of the 38 officers in the section.
Garda management invited a senior official of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), which the federation members left in protest in 1994. The federation has never been officially recognised by Garda management or the Government.
The presence of the GRA official, in the absence of a federation official, was deemed an insult by federation members.
According to sources in Garda Headquarters, a significant group of officers contemplated walking out after delivering a polite message of protest to the Minister.
However, the embarrassment was avoided when the federation representative at Garda Headquarters, Mr Stephen Sheerin, attended the function.
The occasion was the inauguration of the £1.8 million computerised fingerprint retrieval system, which has revolutionised fingerprint work at the bureau. Gardai can identify a fingerprint in 10 minutes where weeks of work would have been needed in the past.
Had the federation official not attended, the Minister could have found herself looking at unattended computer terminals.
Officers of garda rank in the Technical Bureau are among the strongest supporters of the federation. Some were among the protest leaders during the 1994 GRA conference in Galway, which was picketed by dissident gardai.
Technical officers and Government drivers lost out significantly in the last pay deal negotiated under the PCW by the GRA, which benefited gardai on rostered duties.
The deal included allowances in reckoning pay for pension purposes. This adversely affected those on regular duties. The Government will this month consider again the internal dispute, which remains obstinately unresolved.
Earlier this week a new Garda "Siochana Bill, providing for a single new Garda representative organisation, was brought to Cabinet, and is to be laid before the Dail in the new session.
The Bill will contain provisions for the setting up and running of a single new representative association. Senior officials are understood to hope that a newly constituted association will be attractive to gardai if it is accompanied by a revised pay deal.