Over €1.6m spent on politicians' home security since 2023

More than €1.6 million has been spent fitting or upgrading security systems at the homes of politicians and other officeholders since the start of last year.

There has been a significant rise in expenditure by the Office of Public Works (OPW) over the past 18 months against the backdrop of the growing threat from far-right activists and extremists.

The latest figures show the OPW paid out €809,000 for security systems at the private residences of eleven individuals in the first six months of this year.

Details of which politicians and officeholders are involved are not provided on the basis the information could be used by right-wing extremists or criminals.

However, it is known that works generally relate to at-risk Oireachtas members, ministers, judges, officials of the Criminal Assets Bureau, and former officeholders like taoisigh or ex-presidents.

Along with the total yearly security bill, the cost per project has increased markedly over the past seven years.

However, there is no way to figure out whether that is for more sophisticated or enhanced security systems or down to increased installation costs.

In 2023, a total of €826,816 was spent on private residences covering the cost of ten different properties, at an average cost of €82,681.

In the first six months of this year, the OPW has spent €809,023 on eleven separate projects at a cost of around €73,500 each.

Bills in previous years were lower with €586,358 spent in 2022 with the average cost of eleven security installations working out at just over €53,000.

In 2021, the overall bill was €707,787, which covered the costs of works to 14 private dwellings at an average of roughly €50,500.

In 2019, when the OPW fitted security at 20 different homes, the bill for each project worked out at just €42,500 for each house.

Overall, just under €4.7 million has been spent since the start of 2018 on 89 private dwellings, at an average cost of €52,626.

The Office of Public Works had previously refused to release any data on security expenditure at private homes saying it could endanger life or security of a person.

However, the Information Commissioner ruled under Freedom of Information laws that aggregated yearly data could not be used to identify any person or property.

Security concerns for politicians have grown dramatically over the past three years with masked protests outside some homes and bomb threats made against Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and Taoiseach Simon Harris.

An Garda Síochána also recommended restoring trained police drivers to all government ministers in 2022 following a review of security.

Decisions around works at private residences are only made following security reviews by gardaí before being given to the Department of Justice for implementation.

Asked about the expenditure, the OPW said: "We do not have any further comment to make at this time."

Minister McEntee has said an additional five million euro for public order policing will be spent on more specialised equipment, tasers, fencing and the dog unit.

The Minister told a post-budget briefing that there has been a charge in the number and type of protests, and while nobody wants to see this become "common place," the gardaí need to be properly equipped to respond and keep themselves safe.

She added that she stood by her comments made last year when she referred to some protesters as "scumbags" and "thugs", insisting that no one could "condone someone who throws a fireball into a car not knowing if there's a garda in it".

The Minister also said that gardaí were not the only ones responsible for public safety, and that what was required was "a whole of community response".

National office for community safety to be set up

She said that next year every county would have a safety plan driven by An Garda Siochána that would deal with education, poverty, health issues and crime to help their area.

She also said there would be a national office to support this initiative.

She pointed out that body cameras had stopped riots escalating because "potentially riotous behaviour stopped when gardaí turned on the body cameras".

She said that the Government was making progress on garda recruitment, and that the figure of 760 new recruits last year was the highest pre-covid.

A total of 11,000 people had applied to join An Garda Siochána in the last two recruitment campaigns, which she said showed that it is "a job that people want to do".

She said the number of successful candidates not turning up for training or dropping out of the course was small, and that a working group was now looking at what more could be done to speed up the process, including hybrid and satellite training.

On the recruitment of 400 new staff to work with international protection applicants (IPAs), she said the Government was surpassing its targets on staff.

She added that the Government have now been able to process three times the number of applications, 14,000 this year, up from 4,000 in 2021.

She also said there were now fifteen countries in the accelerated programme which had led to a reduction in applicants from those countries.

She added that over 2,000 people had been returned to their home countries, with 100 of those being voluntary returns in August alone.