Rank and file gardaí have voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking industrial action over the imposition of levies and the public sector pay cut during a survey in which only half of those entitled to vote did so.
The Garda Representative Association (GRA) said 93 per cent of respondents to a survey of members voted in favour of taking some form of industrial action that stopped short of a withdrawal of service.
Association general secretary PJ Stone described the result as "positive".
Mr Stone said he believed the GRA national executive now had a "strong mandate" to plan the industrial action despite the low response rate to the ballot, 5,540 of its 11,000 members.
"Ninety three per cent have given us a mandate to take industrial action; that's very clear by the questionnaire, from the results," Mr Stone said.
The survey asked members to consider a number of courses of action in the event of any future ICTU national days of protest over public sector pay. Of the 11,600 members, some 5,540 responded.
Of those, 7.2 per cent voted to take no further action; 65.4 per cent voted to engage in forms of action to be decided by the GRA national executive, but that stopped short of a withdrawal of services; 18.4 per cent voted for withdrawing their services while 8.8 per cent specified "other actions" they believed should be taken.
Mr Stone said the form of industrial action gardaí would engage in had yet to be decided.
The GRA national executive would outline a range of options to its annual delegate conference in April and would ask delegates to decide which ones should be pursued.
"We will chose (actions) that we can deliver on and ones that conference supports," he said.
He added gardaí were clearly deeply unhappy at the way their remuneration had been eroded.
Mr Stone said his members were also unhappy that the GRA did not enjoy full trade union status and so were excluded from the talks on public sector savings late last year.
As well as taking industrial action over pay, the GRA would before the courts next month for a judicial review of the imposition of the pension levy. It was also considering a constitution challenge to seek full trade union status and was willing to take its case to Europe.
"The Government cannot continue to ignore us, we are left outside as far as pay negotiations are concerned," Mr Stone said.
It was "an abomination" that because the GRA was not a trade union it was not allowed carry out a ballot of its member and had to opt instead for a survey questionnaire.
Mr Stone said the right to trade union membership was being denied to gardaí at the same time that senior civil servants had been granted a "one to one" with Government ministers, to lobby them on exemptions on recent pay cuts.
Members of the Garda were seeing their pay cut as they were working to keep the public safe "from the ravages of criminality this country has to deal with on a daily basis".
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has said the Government would not tolerate industrial action.
A spokesman for the Minister said he had made his views known prior to Christmas regarding any threat of action by the GRA.
"He has nothing further to add.”
The GRA in December announced plans to ballot its members on industrial action.
However, it was forced into a climb down when Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern and Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy both pointed out that a member of the Garda withdrawing their service or inducing others to do so was a committing a criminal offence.
It abandoned its ballot plans in favour of a survey. The survey papers were posted out to GRA members and made clear the questions amounted to a canvassing of their opinions rather than an industrial ballot.
The closing date for the ballot was yesterday. The results were announced by the GRA at its offices in Phibsborough, Dublin, this afternoon.