AROUND 20 retired gardai are still living in their old stations with the full permission of the force.

The gardai have refused to say who pays the lighting, heating, electricity and rent bills on behalf of retired gardai living in the stations, which are owned by the Office of Public Works.

The nationwide practice has never come to public attention before. But the focus on the country's garda stations has intensified following the recommendation of An Bord Snip Nua that half of them should be scrapped to save money.

The Office of Public Works confirmed there were about 20 cases of retired gardai living in state accommodation out of a total of 703 garda stations.

It is not known whether these stations are still open to the public, through having a serving garda on site, as is the case with the station in Ballyferriter, Co Kerry -- which is opened for a few hours a day by a garda based in Dingle.

Traditionally, gardai move out of a station immediately after their retirement, so that a new member can replace them. But it appears that there have been exceptions to this rule in small "one-man" rural stations, where the replacement garda may prefer to live away from an ageing garda station.

Every rank-and-file garda gets an untaxed rent allowance payment of €4,162 per year, even if they are living in their own house.

An OPW spokesman said the responsibility for asking retired members to leave the stations lay with An Garda Siochana.

"It's their process to tell the guard to move on, or out of the way, before we would even try to go into a legal element to progress it," he said.

Garda management has provided the OPW with a list of the 20 or so stations which are still being occupied by retired gardai, but has given no indication, so far, that it is preparing to ask the occupants to leave.

It is understood that, in some cases, retired gardai have offered to make a payment but were turned down by the force.

Accepted

Garda Representative Association president Michael O'Boyce said he was aware of a number of situations where retired gardai were living in station accommodation, but he had never had any complaints about it.

"My understanding was that they remained on because no one asked them to leave."

Mr O'Boyce said this was probably because no garda asked to move into the station.

"Whoever was responsible says, 'Well if there's no one looking for it, I'm not going to be the one who goes knocking'."

The Garda Press Office did not wish to comment further when provided with questions.