The visit of US president Joe Biden here in April has sent the Garda overtime bill surging to €78.76 million for the first five months of this year.
In new figures provided by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, the €78.76 million overtime spend to the end of May compares to a 12 month overtime bill of €127.72 million for 2022.
In her written Dáil reply to Neasa Hourigan said Ms McEntee has confirmed that the increased overtime expenditure to the end of May “related to the visit of the President of the United States, Joe Biden”.
The overtime spend for the first five months of this year represents 61.6 per cent of the total €127.72 million Garda overtime spend for 2022 which was the highest in recent years.
The security operation in place for Mr Biden's four-day visit was one of the biggest ever seen on the island of Ireland involving over 2,000 Garda members and much larger in scale than when former US president Barack Obama visited in 2011.
As part of the operation, Gardaí put in place a plan to transport extra gardaí to counties Mayo and Louth to bolster manpower on the ground.
All of the specialist Garda units – including the Armed Response Units, Special Detective Unit, Public Order Unit, Garda Dog Unit and others – were also involved in the policing operation, with all Garda leave cancelled for the duration of the visit.
Separate figures published by An Garda Siochana show that the overtime spend for the first three months of this year totalled €35.24 million showing that the overtime spend for April and May totals €43.52 million or an average overtime daily spend of €713,442 across the 61 days of those two months.
The detailed breakdown of the overtime spend for the first three months shows that the overtime spend in Dublin Garda divisions totalled €12.03 million with the highest spend at €2.55 million in DMR West.
Garda HQ and National Units accounted for an overtime spend of €9.38 million for the first three months
During the visit, the then Minister for Justice, Simon Harris said that he expected the overtime costs to be significant.
He said: "There will of course be significant costs associated with this, we don't know them yet, they will not crystallise yet.
He added: “But to be honest, those costs will pale in significance with the benefit of the visit. The benefit to what I hope is going to continue to embed peace on our island, but also indeed the economic benefit, the tourism benefit, the profile benefit, that a US presidential visit brings.”
The information provided by Ms McEntee shows that the overtime spend for last year of €127.7 million compares to an overtime spend of €112.52 million for 2021 and €97.86 million for 2020.
Ms McEntee stated that the overtime spend for those two years includes overtime for policing operations related to public health restrictions in place as part of the State's response to Covid-19 emergency.
