The Garda Representative Association (GRA) has agreed to defer its protest action following a proposal from Commissioner Drew Harris to try and resolve the ongoing dispute over garda rosters.
The commissioner has proposed a hybrid roster which would allow the majority of gardaí to remain on their current roster while specialist officers would work a GRA suggested roster of six days on followed by four days off - over four garda units.
The GRA said it is prepared to accept the proposal to allow negotiations to begin on a new roster.
The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors has already said it is prepared to enter talks under the internal garda mechanisms.
The garda management team is due to meet the associations again on Monday.
Comm Harris met with the four garda associations for more than three hours today, the longest the sides have ever been in talks on the disputed issue of the roster.
Rank-and-file gardaí want to stay on the current Covid-19 pandemic roster where they work four 12-hour days on and then have four days off.
The Commissioner wants them to return to the only agreed roster, the Westmanstown roster, of six 10-hour days on and four days off.
The Commissioner had insisted that the Westmanstown roster would be reintroduced on 6 November, but has compromised on that demand which has facilitated negotiations to commence.
The GRA saw this as a precondition to talks and began a protest last Tuesday, refusing to take up voluntary overtime.
The protest was also due to continue over the next four Tuesdays, including on next week's Budget Day and Halloween - days with potential for public disorder and violence.
At the meeting today the Commissioner put a proposal to the associations that is in effect a hybrid or split roster.
It would allow frontline gardaí, approximately 60% of rank-and-file, to remain on the current roster.
The remainder - detectives, the traffic corps, community police, and specialist units, would move back to the Westmanstown roster on 6 November.
In return the GRA would call off future protests by asking its members to once again accept voluntary overtime, which in some areas covers as much as 20% of policing posts.
It would also recommend they do not withdraw their labour on 10 November.
The GRA’s Central Executive Committee met this afternoon and overwhelmingly agreed to enter negotiations with the Commissioner.
In a statement, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee welcomed the progress made in the talks.
She also welcomed that "further GRA action has been called off, and that the GRA has indicated it is willing to enter negotiations".
