THERE have been more than 200 allegations made against Gardaí in the Donegal Division in the last two years according to new figures obtained from the Garda Ombudsman.

The figures, released by GSOC to the Donegal News under a Freedom of Information request, show that there has been 245 allegations made against members of the force in Donegal in 2020 and 2021.

The highest number was recorded in 2020 when 137 grievances were lodged with the watchdog followed by 108 in 2021, a drop of 21 per cent. Explaining the breakdown of the figures GSOC said one complaint can contain a number of allegations.

Nationally there were 7,381 allegations made against Gardaí over the two year period with the highest number in the Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR) North (650) followed by DMR West (603). Compared to other areas Donegal ranks tenth out of the 32 Garda districts recorded.

One of the most common types of allegation made to GSOC was ‘neglect of duty’ which involves allegations where a garda failed to take an action that could have been reasonably expected – such as, at one end of the scale, returning a phone call, or properly investigating an alleged serious crime at the other.  A total of 1,447 ‘neglect of duty’ allegations were made nationally over the two year period.

Another common allegation made to the watchdog include ‘non fatal offences’.  These are allegations of a criminal offence listed in the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997 and include, for example assault.

Abuse of authority accounted for 1,247 of the allegations made nationally which includes excessive use of force, or an instruction to do something which the person making the complaint believes was beyond the garda’s authority to instruct.

A spokesperson for GSOC said: “All complaints received by GSOC are assessed against criteria listed in the Garda Síochána Act, 2005 to determine if they are admissible.

“If a complaint does not meet the criteria it is deemed inadmissible and no further action is taken by GSOC. After a complaint is deemed admissible it can be dealt with in a number of ways depending on what is alleged.  All allegations of criminal offences by Gardaí are investigated by GSOC investigators under section 98 of the Act.”

Of the 7,381 allegations made nationally in 2020 and 2021, 2,547 were deemed inadmissible.

If breaches of discipline have been identified complaints can be dealt with in a number of ways, such as unsupervised disciplinary investigations conducted by Garda

Superintendents, a supervised investigation conducted by Garda Superintendents and supervised by GSOC investigators and non-criminal investigations carried out by GSOC

investigators.

If there is deemed to be a breach of discipline regulations then a range of sanctions may be applied, depending on the gravity of the breach found and sanctions are a matter for

the Commissioner.