Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first meeting called to decide on the future of policing in the new Free State.
The existing police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary, was set to be disbanded on 20 February 1922, and was already withdrawn to barracks.
The British Army was leaving the country, so there was now a total absence of authority in the country.
In that vacuum, Ireland was beset by a crime wave of bank robberies, train hijackings, arson and murder.
The chairman of the provisional Government, Michael Collins, had decided to set up an organising committee, with a brief to decide on and begin the formation of a new police force in just three weeks.
From that committee came the decision to set up an entirely new force, to be called the Civic Guard, later An Garda Síochána.
The meeting on 9 February 1922 took place at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.
Present were Collins, the home affairs minister Eamon Duggan (in whose portfolio would be the new police force), and the minister for defence, General Richard Mulcahy.
Those advising them at the meeting were former officers of the RIC and the Dublin Metropolitan Police who had secretly helped the IRA in the War of Independence.
Three weeks later, the committee sent its recommendation to the Government.
It recommended the formation of a new force of over 4,000 men, half the size of the RIC, but organised along similar lines to that force, reporting directly to the minister for home affairs, working out of 800 stations across the country.
Among the recommendations was that the force be armed. The Government accepted all the recommendations of the committee.
The first recruits presented themselves at the temporary depot in the RDS in Dublin, on 21 February 1922.
Former RIC officer Patrick McAvinia was officially the first recruit to the Civic Guard.
