Laois drugs detection unit planned to expand to 24 Gardaí

Laois drugs detection unit planned to expand to 24 Gardaí.

A specialist drug detection unit for the Laois Offaly Kildare Garda district is set to expand with more officers.

Speaking about what he termed an "almost normalisation" of drug use across all "strata of society", Laois Offaly Garda Chief Supt John Scanlan said that a recently created drugs unit needs more personnel.

“If I came here twenty years ago I wouldn’t have had a drugs unit.

"I now have a unit and it looks like I’ll need four sergeants and 20 Gardaí for it,”  he said this week.

Laois cancer patients shared trains with drug addicts during pandemic

Portlaoise Gardai arrest two as drugs and cash seized

In all, he said that the Laois Offaly Kildare division he is in charge of, has 40 Garda stations and almost 900 Gardaí and staff, serving an area of 5,500sq km from the rural Slieve Bloom Mountains up to the edge of urban Dublin.

"Our challenge is that each member is carrying on average 24 investigations at any one time, " Chief Supt Scanlan said.