A chairde,

In that thread that Caoimhin just closed a little something was mentioned that I wanted to ask about. It was mentioned that the Irish requirement for gardai was dropped (or loosened, don't recall). I'd heard this before but now its fresh in my mind.

What I want to know is whether or not this only applies to non-Gaeltacht areas. In other words, do the gardai in the Gaeltacht still have to reach the standard set out by the government. Do they have to reach a higher one (I think thats a good idea). Just wondering if anyone can enlighten me here.

Beir bua agus beannacht

The requirement for recruits was changed to either a qualification Leaving Cert or equivalent in Irish or English. It used to be both.

However, all recruits are trained in Irish, and all must have a satisfactory knowledge of Irish before qualifying.

http://www.garda.ie/angarda/faq.html#R2

I seem to remember the govermment saying "the standard for gardaí will be more Buntús Cainte than Cúpla Focal".

http://www.justice.ie/80256E01003A02CF/vWeb/pcJUSQ6G2CJS-en

http://www.justice.ie/80256E01003A02CF/vWeb/pcJUSQ6G2CJS-ga

(Sínte fada ar lár ar an dara lch?)

Go raibh maith agat a Aonghuis.

I hope that the requirements for Irish speaking are higher and more strict in the Gaeltacht areas.

If I remember correctly, when I was there I was drivin with a friend and he said if a garda pulls you over and you speak to him in Irish and he can't/doesn't also speak in Irish, you can just drive away. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

I wouldn't recommend trying it.

I dont think that is true now. I remember a friend of mine, who was waiting for a bus in dublin,was sitting on a wall. A garda arrived and told him to get off the wall, My friend replied to him in irish, but the garda insisted that he answer him inenglish. My fried persisted with the irish and the garda finally got that pissed off that he took him to the garda station. He there was confronted by a number of garda that wanted him to answer in english, but he wouldnt answer in english and explained in riish that he didnt want to speak english. It took the garda 3 hours to get an irish speaking garda to come from another station to talk with him. My friend to the irish speaking garda (in riish) that he was just sitting on the wall waiting on the bus when this all happened and he just doesnt feel like talknig english. The garda had to let him go and id say there were alot of red faces in finglas garda station that day, arent they all supposed to have atleast a basic command of the language?

Noting that this was about 5 years ago when he was about 19 or 20. I think its a great story but still dont know what possessed him to waste so much time. Very funy when he told me first. But the garda will take you too a garda station where a garda has irish or you will have to wait for the irish garda to arrive on the scene.

Well, Niallmac, the story is a disgrace. How can a policemen **insist** that you speak English? How can he force you not to speak the official language of your country? It'll be different soon - you'll be taken down the cop shop for refusing to answer...in Polish!

In certain areas the garda seem to think they have more control then they have like where i lived in dublin. I hate the Garda Síochána, i really hate them. I have always steered clear of trouble in my area, which is a bad area but the garda assume that everyone in my area is bad because of minority ( or majority, not really sure sometimes). You wouldnt believe the amount of trouble i have had with garda, they are SCUM, and no one will tell me otherwise. I've seen the antics they get up to, they are a disgrace. I thank God every day that it was the Army that took the name of Oglaigh na hEireann and not the Garda.. they are a discracful police force.

Karhu, polish people are very much liked by alot of irish peopl, like me! my girlfriend is polish ( which i mentioned before) and she has more irish than most irish people, cool ? or what. She's only been learning about 2 month.

Anyways this isnt the garda bashing forum so i will stop talking about this.

quote:

Karhu, polish people are very much liked by alot of irish peopl, like me!

The reverse is also true - read the papers! I have nothing against Polish people, who are after all European, but this law about the police is simply designed to allow large numbers of foreigners to go around arresting Irish people. Have the Irish lost their previous testicular fortitude?

Karhu,

please read more carefully.

The police, whether Irish or foreign, must all reach a minimum standard of Irish to qualify.

The catch is that, having qualified, there is no regular check up of whether they have maintained the standard.

quote:

but this law about the police is simply designed to allow large numbers of foreigners to go around arresting Irish people

An iarracht lag ar ghrinn atá anseo?

"Have the Irish lost their previous testicular fortitude?" ...lol

I do read the papers. I havent read about any polish people being involved in anything in the past few weeks or even months. I HAVE read of the hundreds of irish people commiting crimes( alot of them from my area, shame ), african man killing wife and then getting stabbed in jail the next day, garda siochana corruption in donegal, inquiries into that special branch garda shooting a few years back, and loads and loads of incidents involving different people and nationalities. What is reading the paper going to prove. theres a bad element in every society, and in the polish community are no different, so what, "romantic ireland's dead and gone, it's with O'Leary in the grave"...

There will be no large amount of foreigners me thinks! I think it will be 10 or 20 in dublin... and none outside dublin. maybe in some of the big cities.

You'll find that police forces are held in far lower regard in working class areas, than they are in middle class areas.

The reason for this (and a topic which I don't want to get into) is that far more crimes are committed in working class areas. These crimes are committed by people from the locality. In essence, in these areas, the police are getting in the people's way, not letting them do what they want to do. The people want to rob cars, yet the Gardaí get in the way. That's conflict right there.

In my part of Dublin, (which is working class), the majority of the youth would subscribe to the idea of "Garda are scum". This is more of an infantile sheep following than anything else -- they don't realise that they'd be at the mercy of the actual scum in their area if the Gardaí weren't around. Unfortunately, some people just never grow up.

quote:

I have nothing against Polish people, who are after all European, but this law about the police is simply designed to allow large numbers of foreigners to go around arresting Irish people.

No, it's designed to allow large numbers of foreigners to become police officers.

I don't care who arrests me, so long as he or she smiles and speaks courteously. If he or she acts disrespectfully and man-handles or assaults me, then the situation is likely to evolve into "garda assaulted, perpetrator escaped on foot".

Can we get real here please:

http://www.gaelport.com/index.php?page=clippings&id=678&viewby=date

quote:

The Public Appointments Service (PAS) said yesterday 10% of all applicants were foreign nationals - with the vast majority of them Chinese.

Not all applicants will be successful.

The force will reflect the population, and frankly, I think that is a good thing.

(But then, I'm middle class. Although I live in an area in Wicklow which Sinn Féin has offered to police.... that scares me).

quote:

I don't care who arrests me, so long as he or she smiles and speaks courteously. If he or she acts disrespectfully and man-handles or assaults me, then the situation is likely to evolve into "garda assaulted, perpetrator escaped on foot".

Er...yes. You are not a nationalist. But what does that prove?

Fear_na_mbróg, in my area, also working class. The garda are no friends of the people. The main reason being because they are corrupt(payoffs from drug dealers), lazy(i had a break-in on my house last year, the garda came the next day!, and said they would get back to me, never did). I've been brought to court for not producing licence and insurance( i did, garda incompetence, and they refused to resolve it for me even though a garda in clontarf garda station said they should be able to fix this error without going to court).

I wont continue to bore you with this, but what im saying the garda in working class areas are the hard garda that can deal with this sort of crap from gansters and drugdealers, but the sad thing is that most of these garda that are 'hard' suffer from a lack of general communication skills and tar every one with the saqme brush. There are numerous reasons why young people dislike the gardai, acting the sheep is one of them. The fact that they really are SCUM in some areas is another one. Another would be that in my area anyway, they allow drug dealers to operate for information. I dont care what anyone says, its wrong.

OK. Perhaps we should leave this discussion as it is -- we're moments away from a moderator putting their foot down.

:-)

(Message edited by niallmac on August 02, 2006)

To get rid of the Irish requirements which will come in the next decade , the Govt of the day will be able to come up with the facts of "More people speaking Polish/Chinese/Lithuanian/Urdu/Punjabi/Romanian" than Gaeilge which will be true if Immigration is left to continue as it has been since may 2004.Gaeilge will be our first official language only as far as EU translations of documents go.Can you imagine the USA having Conchise/Navajo as the official language and only a handful of Indigenous Natives being able to make sense of it and then the USA demanding it to be an "Official Language" at the UN/NATO/WTO/GATT and translated.What a laugh but that is how we are going about it in this country we are a joke in the eyes of the "majority " of EU bureaucrats.
We will be compelled to speak Béarla, which even in the darkest days of Empire we could still get by in the Native language.
Óchón agus óchon ó ach táimid i mbaol an teanga a chailiúint and the British will not be responsible even though they ruled us for over 700 years.
We are a laughing stock of the EU , we pass all their laws and enforce/implement them but we don't implement the laws passed in Dáil Éireann( A talking shop for windbags) for our own nation i.e mobile phone use while driving , you just note the amount of people breaking the law everyday.

As to police forces, like most people groups, there's good and bad in them.

I appreciated hearing that story about the friend who decided not to speak English. The problem is that the poor man was treated badly because of it.

What if , say, some man of the older persuasion, insert any name you like, lives in the Gaeltacht and doesn't speak terribly great English. I know its rare but just go with it. Anyway, lets say he witnesses a murder outside the pub in his village (or any other building) and all the witnesses are promptly questioned by the gardai upon their arrival. Our man is shaken up by what he saw, obviously, and so his limited English becomes more scarce. And then what if the gardai were cruel to him for his"refusal to speak English". I know this is unlikely at best, but I don't care because even if this happened to one person it would be a tremendous shame and a disgusting lack of respect and courtacy on the part of the Gardai, just something to think about.

Beir bua agus beannacht

I wouldnt be suprised if that happened with all the stories im reading in the papers lately. Did you hear about that garda that pissed on a murder scene when he was drunk, f'in disgrace. Or the other one who confincated that womans car because they had no licence in the car. He drove off recklessly and then crashed the thing around the corners. She got an 'undesclosed' amount of money. She didnt even get an apology. You should read that story and you'll get a true picture of the garda siochana.

Im gona stop talking about this now.. sorry for sending the thread off on tangent,

Karhu,

Do you have a problem with eastern Europeans in my country?

"the opposite is also true, read the papers!"

Why do you use this a reply to "alot of irish people like polish people".. It never said in the papers that irish people disliked polishj people, did it? because thats what you said, could you clarify what you mean by what you said?

PS. Only 3 months ago Bertie Ahern praised the polish as model immigrants, because they all work hard, pay there taxes and barely any take assistence off the government like other minorities.

This thread has drifted off topic and will be closed.

Caoimhín