Pay restraint gives Garda the 'blue flu'

THE ANGUISH in Dublin's Mountjoy Prison this morning can only be imagined as hundreds of career burglars, car thieves and pickpockets wake up in jail on what could have been the biggest pay-day of their lives - Ireland's first garda strike.

Public alarm about the threatened strike yesterday prompted the Dail to hold an emergency debate on the crisis.

The country's 11,000 gardai are legally barred from taking strike action, so today's pay protest takes the form of a spontaneous epidemic of "blue flu". The 8,000 rank and file members of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) will ring in sick from 6am this morning complaining of painful flat feet preventing them from carrying out their duties.

It is the first police strike since the brief "Macushla Revolt" in 1968, which won the right to representation.

Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne announced special contingency measures, with senior ranks and partly trained cadets giving front-line cover. The Irish Army and defence forces will be on standby.

Commissioner Byrne urged gardai: "Don't do something that will harm this force for ever more," adding it was "disingenuous" of them to report sick when they were not.

"What signal are you sending out to the people of this country: that members would perpetrate a dishonesty. If it is an individual decision for members of the gardai, I'm saying 'Do the right thing'," he said.

The GRA seek a 39 per cent rise to offset a widening gap with other groups - such as teachers, with whom they previously had pay parity. The Government has offered a productivity-related 7 per cent.

Justice minister John O'Donoghue urged gardai to work normally, saying that to concede their claim would undermine the Government's 10-year- old economic strategy based on voluntary pay restraint in return for tax cuts. The GRA insists it is not a trade union and not part of such national deals.

Liz McManus, justice spokeswoman of the opposition Democratic Left, accused Mr O'Donoghue of "deliberately exaggerating the extent of crime" while in Opposition, leading the GRA to believe he would deliver on their demands.

The GRA executive were to meet last night.