New Irish police force numbers to rise to 4,300

Dublin, 26 September 1922 – Membership of the new Irish police force, the Civic Guard, has reached 1,500 officers and men, and it has been proposed to increase this to a maximum of 4,300.

This statement was made in the Dáil yesterday by Kevin O’Higgins, the Minister for Home Affairs, who then laid out the pay scales that will apply across all ranks in the new force.

An ordinary guard will be paid between £3 10s and £4 15s per week. For a sergeant the rate of pay will be £5 to £5 12s per week. Inspectors start on a salary of £310 p.a., rising by £10 p.a. to £360.

The rates of pay rise further up the ranks with the current Assistant Commissioner, Edward Coogan, receiving a yearly salary of £900, with an £80 lodging allowance.

At the top of the pay scale is the Commissioner, General Eoin O’Duffy, whose annual salary of £1,300 comes with an lodging allowance of £120.

An Garda Síochána National Centenary Commemorative Event, Dublin Castle, 27 August 2022

Last Sunday, Commissioner O’Duffy presented prizes at a Civic Guard sporting event in Kildare at which he remarked that he had never before presented a prize to a policeman.

Commissioner O’Duffy said that he was delighted that national athletics wopuld play a prominent part in the new force as there was nothing better for a healthy mind than a healthy body. Paying tribute to the GAA, from which he said the best men in the Volunteers had been drawn, the commissioner added that he was glad to see the new police force involved in Gaelic matters and that they would be ‘part and parcel’ of the community.

In the old police, he added, there were good men. They had work to do that was distasteful to many Irish people, but that would not be the case with the Civic Guard.

Candidates for the Civic Guard must be between the ages of 19 and 27 years with the age for retirement provisionally set at 57 years for inspectors, sergeants and guards. Higher ranks can continue to 60 with the option of extending the career to 63.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]