OPINION: Templemore garda pool is an exercise in cutting off your nose to spite your face

If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is the need for better relations between communities and the gardaí.

Calls for more resources, open days at garda stations and more foot patrols are fine ideas. But until very recently, Templemore had garda-community co-operation down to a T.

A reciprocal relationship that has been in place for almost 60 years now is in danger over a Friday night swimming lesson.

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CLOSED FOR BUSINESS

The We Just Want To Swim Templemore campaign was set up earlier this month to protest the closing of the pool at the college to the community.

The campaigners were first told that they needed a licence from the OPW, and later the pool would be closed for the winter.

The petition to reverse the closure now has almost a thousand signatures, and the campaign has garnered national attention.
Next Saturday, the community is set to march.

Listening to the campaign organisers and reading the responses from the OPW and An Garda Síochána, it seems so senseless to me.

The campaigners say they are only asking for the Friday night kids’ swimming lessons.

They say they have enjoyed a great relationship with the college though it has changed over the past few years.

They have welcomed recruits for generations and put up with disruptions caused by parades.

The guards say if the pool reopens, it will be for the garda recruits and considering the cost. The OPW say it is up to the guards.

I’ll confess I did not know the community used the pool.

I suppose the humble swimming lesson doesn’t make the local headlines the way open days and calls for increased policing resources do.

But it’s the mundane, everyday bits that are so essential to make that relationship work.

It seems silly to throw it away for bureaucracy.

There has to be a better hill to die on.

SHORT MEMORIES

In 1964 the Garda Training College moved from the Phoenix Park in Dublin to McCann Barracks in Templemore.

According to the Tipperary Star that week, 250 recruits (plus the married families) and 70 training and administrative staff descended on Templemore.

Templemore welcomed them.

On the day of the opening, postmaster Martin O’Shea was quoted in the Tipperary Star as saying:

“We expect it to become even busier now; this is a very good thing for the town. All the local traders will benefit. The supply contracts have been given to local people,” he added.

That changed in 2018 when shop local became shop global as the college came under the remit of the National Procurement Agency.

In 1965, the pool opened and while it was for recruits, the community was given access. Now that too is closed.

And in 1964, the Tipperary Star wrote:

“The transfer of the training centre for garda recruits and ban gardaí from the metropolis is a memorable occasion for the nation as well as for the north Tipperary town of Templemore.”

I can assure you that 58 years later, Templemore remembers.

They remember when the college supported local traders, that they supported the passing out parades, and they remember learning to swim at the garda pool.

So, this begs the question, will the closing of the pool be another memorable occasion for the north Tipperary town of Templemore?

And is this what An Garda Síochána would like them to remember?