In 2023, under the Criminal Justice Act, the maximum sentences for attacking a member of the emergency services – whether gardaí, ambulance staff, prison officer, a member of the defence forces or fire brigade – increased dramatically from 7 to 12 years. This was in response to the notable increase of assaults on those simply trying to do their jobs.
Has this worked as a deterrent? The following is sobering reading and answers that question categorically.
Before the courts in Cork last week was a case against a man called Emmanuel Ibraham who threatened to behead another man while he was signing on at the garda station in Togher. It is alleged that on Tuesday 27th January, Mr Ibraham pulled out a silver steak knife from his sock and placed it into his waistband. He then removed a larger black knife from his waistband and began swinging it in the air. He proceeded to approach a member of the public who happened to be in the station and began repeating that he was going to behead this innocent bystander. He only stopped when a member of the Gardaí appeared in the area.
Gardaí tackled the suspect and got the weapon from him. The second knife was retrieved when he was in a cell. In the court, the suspect claimed he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and didn’t know it was an offence to carry a knife. The sergeant then had to go through the indignity of being crossed examined by the accused man’s solicitor. Thankfully the judge remanded Emmanuel Ibraham in custody. The case was adjourned until 4th February.
In Athlone, on Monday 26th January, 38-year-old Adil Mohammed of no fixed abode was remanded in custody after being charged with three counts of criminal damage; he badly damaged a garda car and a garda van, smashed the automatic front doors, the counter and a glass window on the evening of the 25th January.
The number of assaults on members of An Garda Siochána while on duty has increased dramatically in recent months. By August of 2025, the number of assaults country wide was 156. At the time Senator Sarah O Reilly of Aontú said:
There was no doubt our streets are becoming unsafe, these attacks ae not helping morale or recruitment to the force; our government needs to support our legislation for harsher sentences’.
She made this statement after a probationary garda was injured in a knife attack in Dublin and another garda was punched in the face. In Dungarvan last October seven gardaí were injured in three separate violent incidents.
By the the end of last year the number of assaults on Gardaí was over 600.
This growing number is following the trend of recent years. There were 299 assaults in 2014; 301 in 2015; 282 in 2016, 264 in 2017; 224 in 2018; 266 in 2019, reflecting a steady number. Then there was a dramatic leap. In 2023 there were 470 assaults – and 373 in 2024.
Clearly, our system isn’t working as intended. It leads one to ask: who in their right mind would be a Garda when being compelled to face this level of violence and hostility on the job?
So, what are other forces doing to aid in decreasing the numbers of violent assaults and reassure the public that policing and public awareness go hand in hand?
Following the completion of an internal review last November the PSNI will be publishing the mugshot of criminal who have been imprisoned for at least 12 months.
A spokesperson for the PSNI said; For justice to be seen to be done we want to communicate to the public, by all means available, of positive criminal justice outcomes in their communities. This can be achieved through our news release post sentencing, and now, the release of the defendant’s custody images as part of this information supplied to the media. This will be an effective way to build confidence among communities as a deterrent to offenders and provide reassurance about the proactive steps police are taking to bring perpetrators before the courts.
This new initiative is not against the European Convention on Human Rights, data protection principles or policing policy. The release of these images has to be signed off on by a senior officer of Superintendent rank, and he or she must apply a decision-making rationale that balances the purpose of the image release against other considerations.
It remains to be seen if this initiative will be effective in the coming months, but at least they are grabbing the issue by the scruff of the neck and allowing the community an awareness of who resided among them.
What I suggest to you, dear reader, is that the threat of an increase in sentence for assault, whether on members of the public or the emergency services is not a deterrent, and needs to be re-examined before the word ‘assault’ becomes more regularly, ‘killed’.
Adrienne Acton writes from Cork