According to Conor Brady, a historian of the Garda and a former Garda Ombudsman Commissioner, as well as a former Irish Times editor, the original garda was a fully armed force. “And it’s still doing the job today.”Regardless of the reasons, setting up an unarmed force in the immediate aftermath of a civil war was an undeniable achievement. There will be four levels of firearms training under the new model, ranging from Level 1 basic training to Level 4 training for the elite ERU. A member of the Garda Armed Support Unit, in Dublin. For their part, civil liberties campaigners want to see more data on how and where armed force is used.

Source: The Irish Times September 28, 2020 00:22 UTC