(; meaning "the Guardian(s) of the Peace"), more commonly referred to as the () or "the Guards", is the national police and security service of the Republic of Ireland. The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner, who is appointed by the Irish Government. Its headquarters are in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
Since the formation of the in 1923, it has been a predominantly unarmed force, and more than three-quarters of the service do not routinely carry firearms. As of June 2025, the police service had 14,525 sworn members (including 302 sworn Reserve members) and 3,669 civilian staff. Operationally, the is organised into four geographical regions: the East, North/West, South and Dublin Metropolitan regions, in turn broken into divisions, districts and sub-districts.
The service is the main law enforcement and security agency in the state, acting at local and national levels. Its roles include crime detection and prevention, drug enforcement, road traffic enforcement and accident investigation, diplomatic and witness protection responsibilities; it also provides a community policing service. Special units exist for specific areas of work such as organised crime prevention, migration management and cyber crime, and there is a central Garda Technical Bureau, a mounted unit, and a canine unit. The service has its own college.
Members of the are not free to join general trade unions but are represented by four rank-based organisations; there is also an association for retired members of the force.
Terminology The service was originally named the Civic Guard in English, but in 1923 it became the in both English and Irish. In 2025, its title was altered to An Garda Síochána. This is usually translated as "the Guardians of the Peace". ("of Ireland", ) appears on its logo but is seldom used elsewhere. At that time, there was a vogue for naming the new institutions of the Irish Free State after counterparts in the French Third Republic; the term "guardians of the peace" () had been used since 1870 in French-speaking countries to designate civilian police forces as distinguished from the armed gendarmery, notably municipal police in France, communal guards in Belgium and cantonal police in Switzerland.Christian Chevandier, Policiers dans la ville. Une histoire des gardiens de la paix, Paris, Gallimard, 2012
How it is referred to depends on the register being used. It is variously known as ; the ; the ; the (plural); and it is popularly called "the Guards". Although is singular, in these terms it is used as a collective noun, like police.
An individual officer is called a (plural ), or less formally, a "guard", and is typically addressed as such by members of the public when on duty. A police station is called a station. is also the name of the lowest rank within the force (e.g. " John Murphy", analogous to the British term "constable" or the American "officer", "deputy", "trooper", etc.). A female officer was once officially referred to as a (; "female guard"; plural ). This term was abolished in 1990, but is still used colloquially in place of the gender-neutral .
Colloquially, as a slang or derogatory term, they are sometimes referred to in certain areas of Ireland as "the shades".
History
Policing in Ireland, prior to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, had been undertaken by the British quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), with a separate and unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). With the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence, a security force named the Irish Republican Police was created by the provisional government. This policing organisation would slowly develop in the early years of the new state by incorporating various pre-existing law-enforcement agencies and local units into a single centralised, nationwide and civilian police organisation.
In February 1922 the Civic Guard (originally People’s Guard) was formed by the Provisional Government to take over the responsibility of policing the fledgeling Irish Free State. It replaced the RIC and the Irish Republican Police of 1919–22. In August 1922 the force accompanied Michael Collins when he met the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle.
The Garda Síochána (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 enacted after the creation of the Irish Free State on 8 August 1923, provided for the creation of "a force of police to be called and known as '[t]he . Under section 22, The Civic Guard were deemed to have been established under and to be governed by the Act. The law therefore effectively renamed the existing force.
The seven-week Civic Guard Mutiny began in May 1922, when recruits took over the Kildare Depot. It resulted in Michael Staines' resignation in September.
During the Civil War of 1922–23, the new Free State set up the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) as an armed, plain-clothed counter-insurgency unit. It was disbanded after the end of the war in October 1923 and elements of it were absorbed into the DMP.
In Dublin, policing remained the responsibility of the DMP (founded 1836) until it merged with the in 1925. Since then, the has been the only civil police service in the state now known as Ireland. Other police forces with limited powers are the Military Police within the Irish Defence Forces, the Airport Police Service, and Dublin Harbour Police and Dún Laoghaire Harbour Police forces.
The headquarters, the Phoenix Park Depot in Dublin, consists of a series of buildings; the first of these were occupied in 1839 by the new Constabulary. Over subsequent years, additional buildings were added, including a riding school, chapel, infirmary and cavalry barracks; all are now used for other purposes. The new Síochána started to occupy the Depot in early 1923. The facility also included a training centre but that was moved to McCan Barracks, Templemore, County Tipperary in the 1960s; it is now the College.
During the Second World War (often referred to in Ireland as "the Emergency") there were two additional reserve forces to the , and the Local Security Force.
had the power of arrest and wore a uniform, and were allowed to leave the reserve or sign-up as full members of the at the end of the war before the reserve was disbanded. The reserve was established by the Emergency Powers (Temporary Special Police Force) Order 1939.
The Local Security Force (LSF) did not have the power of arrest, and part of the reserve was soon incorporated into the Irish Army Reserve under the command of the Irish Army.
Organisation The general direction and control of the service are the responsibility of the Commissioner, who is appointed by the Government. The commissioner is responsible to the Minister for Justice and Equality, who in turn is accountable to the government for the security and policing of the state. The Commissioner's immediate subordinates are two deputy commissioners – in charge of "Policing and Security" and "Governance & Strategy", respectively – and a Chief Administrative Officer with responsibility for resource management (personnel, finance, Information and Communications Technology, and accommodation). A few functions, including the Office of Corporate Communications and the Internal Audit Section, report directly to the Commissioner's Office. There is an assistant commissioner for each of the four geographical regions, along with a number dealing with other national support functions. The four geographical regions, each overseen by an assistant commissioner, are the Dublin Metropolitan Region, North-Western, Eastern and Southern.
At an equivalent or near-equivalent level to the assistant commissioners are such figures as the Chief Medical Officer, and the civilian executive directors, heading Information and Communications Technology, Finance and Services, Strategy and Transformation, Legal, and Human Resources and People Development.
Directly subordinate to the assistant commissioners are approximately 40 chief superintendents, about half of whom supervise what are called divisions. Each division contains a number of districts, each commanded by a superintendent assisted by a team of inspectors. Each district contains a number of sub-districts, which are usually commanded by sergeants.
Typically each subdistrict contains only one Garda station. A different number of are based at each station depending on its importance. Most of these stations employ the basic rank of , which was referred to as the rank of Guard until 1972. The most junior members of the service are students, whose duties can vary depending on their training progress. They are often assigned clerical duties as part of their extracurricular studies.
The organisation also has more than 3,000 civilian support staff (not sworn police officers). working across a range of areas such as human resources, occupational health services, finance and procurement, internal audit, IT and telecommunications, accommodation and fleet management, as well as aspects of scene-of-crime support, research and analysis, training and general administration. The figure also includes industrial staff such as traffic wardens, drivers and cleaners.
Commissioners
+ Commissioners Name From Until Reason Michael Staines February 1922 September 1922 Resigned Eoin O'Duffy September 1922 February 1933 Dismissed Eamon Broy February 1933 June 1938 Retired Michael Kinnane June 1938 July 1952 Died Daniel Costigan July 1952 February 1965 Resigned William P Quinn February 1965 March 1967 Retired Patrick Joseph Carroll March 1967 September 1968 Retired Michael Wymes September 1968 January 1973 Retired Patrick Malone January 1973 September 1975 Retired Edmund Garvey September 1975 January 1978 Replaced Patrick McLaughlin January 1978 January 1983 Retired Lawrence Wren February 1983 November 1987 Retired Eamonn Doherty November 1987 December 1988 Retired Eugene Crowley December 1988 January 1991 Retired Patrick Culligan January 1991 July 1996 Retired Patrick Byrne July 1996 July 2003 Retired Noel Conroy July 2003 November 2007 Retired Fachtna Murphy November 2007 December 2010 Retired Martin Callinan December 2010 March 2014 Resigned Nóirín O'Sullivan March 2014 (acting)November 2014 (permanent) September 2017 Retired Dónall Ó Cualáin September 2017 (acting) September 2018 Permanent appointment made Drew Harris September 2018 September 2025 5-year term extended to 7 Justin Kelly September 2025 Incumbent
The first Commissioner, Michael Staines, who was a Pro-Treaty member of , held office for only eight months. It was his successors, Eoin O'Duffy and Éamon Broy, who played a central role in the development of the service. O'Duffy was Commissioner in the early years of the service when to many people's surprise the viability of an unarmed police service was established. O'Duffy later became a short-lived political leader of the quasi-fascist Blueshirts before heading to Spain to fight alongside Francisco Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. Broy had greatly assisted the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Anglo-Irish War, while serving with the DMP. Broy was depicted in the film Michael Collins as having been arrested and killed by SIS agents during the Irish War of Independence, when in reality he lived till 1972 and headed the from 1933 to 1938. Broy was followed by Commissioners Michael Kinnane (1938–52) and Daniel Costigan (1952–65). The first Commissioner to rise from the rank of ordinary was William P. Quinn, who was appointed in February 1965.