Ken Foxe
Gardaí have spent almost €1 million buying cars to use for ministerial transport over the past two years.
A total of €971,556 has been paid out for 16 new vehicles, at an average cost of around €61,000 each, according to Garda records.
The massive outlay came following a government decision in late 2022 that saw gardaí assigned to all ministers just over a decade after a cost-saving plan for civilian drivers was first introduced.
The change was made following a security review by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and in the context of a rise in protests by far-right and racist extremists.
There are now 37 cars in the Garda ministerial fleet, 24 of which are Audi A6 vehicles while another eight are BMWs of different varieties.
Also, part of the government transport pool is a Ford Transit, two Hyundai Ioniqs, one Lexus, and a Mercedes S350 that is now ten years old.
Diesel vehicles
Despite the presence of the Green Party in government, more than half of the fleet runs on diesel with 21 of the vehicles operating with environmentally unfriendly engines.
Fourteen of the cars are hybrid, mostly plug-ins, while only two – the Hyundai Ioniqs – are fully electric.
Some of the vehicles appear destined for replacement soon after running up significant amounts of mileage on their clocks.
A 2014 Audi A6 for example, has nearly 410,000 kilometers on its odometer, while three 2013 Audis have clocked up between 332,000 and 367,000 kilometres each.
Altogether, the 37-strong fleet of vehicles have driven an incredible 6.4 million kilometres traversing Ireland, or enough to travel the circumference of the earth 160 times.
In response to a request for environmental information on the ministerial fleet, gardaí said they would not provide details of which car was assigned to which minister.
They also declined to provide an individual breakdown of how much each of the new vehicles had cost.
Their decision said: “The pricing structure of a supplier with regard to goods or services provided to An Garda Síochána is not known to competitors or the public in general.
“If this information were made publicly available, it is reasonable to expect that it would prejudice the ability of a supplier to compete inother contracts or negotiations in the future.”
As part of plans to introduce low emission vehicles into their fleet, An Garda Síochána have said that as ministerial vehicles reach end of service, they are “where appropriate” replaced with hybrid or fully electric cars.
However, gardaí said that no vehicles had been disposed of in the period since August 2022, and that no sales of old ministerial cars had taken place during that time.
