Young outpatients from Cork hospital become ‘gardaí for a day’

Cork city received a much-needed boost in garda numbers yesterday as 25 very special recruits ed the service as ‘gardaí for a day’ during an open day held at Togher Garda Station today in association with the children’s outpatients unit at Cork University Hospital.

of Garda units such as the Traffic Corps, Emergency Response Unit, Canine Unit, Public Order Unit came into the station on their day off or before their official shift to give demonstrations to the eager trainees.

Events at the station were only a prelude to a full day of adventure for the children, many of whom have challenging health conditions, and who were ed by family .

Fun

Aaliyah and Sophia Fitzgerald Cambridge, 10-year-old twin sisters from Bishopstown, were having great fun on the Traffic Corps motorbikes, revving the engines and setting the sirens going.

Their mother Sarah said that Aaliyah is attending hospital, and staff “made sure Sophia got a chance to come along too”.

At the Public Order Unit stand, Lindsay McCaul from Cobh was proud that her son Cayden Dempsey wasn’t so keen on taking up the invitation of the ‘red man’, a garda clad from head to toe in bright scarlet body armour, to attack with water balloons and a baton.

Hero

“He’s a Little Blue Hero as well,” she said. “He’s really into the gardaí.”

After going around to the different units, there was an assembly in front of the Garda station for all the new recruits and they then marched down, led by two pipers and a drummer, to the marquee where they received their ID badges and their certificates.

As Superintendent Finbarr O’Sullivan of Togher Garda Station presented the certificates, in the presence of Chief Superintendent Tom Myers and Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for the Southern Region Eileen Foster, he paid tribute to the efforts of the new recruits and thanked all those, including the CUH team led by Gillian Kelleher, business manager for CUH Outpatients, and all the gardaí who gave up their time to take part.

Hope

Speaking to The Echo, Supt O’Sullivan said gardaí have a lot of interaction with CUH, and the idea of the day’s events was to give children, as ‘gardaí for a day’, an immersive opportunity to try out different aspects of policing.

“The secondary theme is then to look at ‘garda for life’ and our concept there is to give hope to the children,” said Supt O’Sullivan.

“A lot of them have challenges, they’re young children wondering what is their future, and they see the requirements to the Gardaí, Defence Forces, or emergency services, and we want to say there’s hope because we’ve had gardaí who have been injured on duty, and they’re still working, and gardaí who ed with challenges. This is about a fun day for today and hope for the future.”

After the graduation, Chief Supt Myers described the event as a cause for smiles all around.

“We spend a lot of time and energy in community policing, and our community gardaí are very involved in all the hospitals — days like today make it all worthwhile,” said Chief Supt Myers.

“I’m delighted to see we’ve got 25 new gardaí here in Cork city — we’ve been banging that drum for some time — and, who knows, some of them may well us, and we’d be delighted to have them.”

Following the graduation ceremony, the children headed off in a garda motorcade to Cork Harbour for a boat trip, a visit to the Naval Base on Haulbowline, and later on to Cork City Fire Brigade, finishing up with a visit to the courthouse on Anglesea St.