"Navan station as it stands is just not suitable so the solution is to pick a new site, build a new station"

Paul Murphy
There is an outstanding need for a new Garda divisional headquarters for Meath in Navan and any government money should be put towards acquiring a site and constructing a new building instead of an extension to the existing building at Abbey Road, Superintendent Michael Devine said this week as he prepares to retire from the force next month.
Describing working conditions inside the station, he said there was an old chapel in the original school which was now the kitchen – and that’s about the  biggest room in the place.  “After that we have a little public office  that is totally unsuitable for doing anything.

If a member of the public comes in and wants to make a complaint to a member in private, you’d find it very hard to get a room in which to do that because if somebody else is taking a statement, we only have one interview room  in the whole divisional headquarters station. 
"The structure as it stands is just not suitable so the solution is to pick a new site, build a new station. We’re working out of medieval conditions but we have fantastic people who do a great job under those conditions, a fact recognised by the Meath Joint Policing Committee members who went to Wexford divisional HQ earlier this year and saw the facilities there”.
Mick, as he is known far and wide, joined the force in 1979 and his first posting was at Store Street station in Dublin’s city centre. Within a short time he was thrown in at the deep end when he was urgently summoned on duty to deal with the aftermath  of the Stardust nightclub disaster in Artane when 48 people were killed and 214 injured in a fire which engulfed the building. 
Recalling those terrible days, Superintendent Devine said he was the one who identified most, if not all, of the remains of those who died. “I ended up in the mortuary. I was trying to separate bodies….I suppose it’s difficult to describe….in fact I don’t even like describing something that I would not like anybody ever to see. Horrific scenes, horrific, that’s all I can say”. 

_{Supt Michel Devine with Chief Supt Fergus Healy at the The Central last Friday}

On the night of the disaster himself and two other Gardai reported in to help. One of them got sick immediately and had to go off duty and he was followed by the other man.“So I was left by myself on the night. I would have individualised the remains if you like, put them on stretchers and numbered them and looked for items of jewellery and suchlike to help with identification”.
He was thrown into the deep end, a traumatic experience for a young Garda barely out of Templemore. And there were no welfare or counselling services to help deal with the enormity of the situation. “My treatment was to go down to Keating’s (pub) or the Talbot Inn to have a brandy or whiskey and then go straight back because obviously the place was thronged with media”. 

His connection with the incident went on for weeks because there were remains that had still not been identified and the Gardai had to seek dental records. In addition, he had to sit in as five pathologists carried out post mortems on the victims. “That was my first serious inauguration into the job and it was something that I would never expect nor want to see anyone else involved in”.
He was on duty for the visit to Ireland of Pope Paul II to Ireland in 1979 (“I didn’t go to see Pope Francis – I decided to leave it to himself this time”), and he was also on duty during the dramatic days of the H-Block protests.
He was also the first officer on the scene when the campaigning journalist Veronica Guerin was murdered and locally he dealt with the death of model Katy French. 

_{Garda colleagues with Supt Mick Devine at his retirement party at The Central last Friday}

Another case that troubles him, and which has not yet been brought to a conclusion, is the shooting dead of Paul Gallagher in the Slane area in 2014. 
The Clare-born officer did the rounds of duty in a number of Dublin city stations, including Fitzgibbon Street, and Ballyfermot but at one stage found himself in Roscommon town. 

He laughed as he recalled the change in policing culture between the city and the country. “If there was such a place as Heaven, then it was in Roscommon. You wondered ‘what will I find to do here?’. They had an unbelievable number of guards compared to some stations in Dublin where they were flat out. You really had to work to find something to do [in Roscommon]. Even though I was stationed down there I was back in Dublin a lot because of court cases that had been hanging over and I eventually got back to the city after eight months”. 
As he prepares to leave the force he has no regrets and plenty of good memories. “I love sport, especially the football and I enjoy the horses so that will satisfy me from now on”, he said.