Tattoos and the Gardai

Have AGS any policy on piercings…..seems like every second male these days has one plus a good few ‘tats’…?

A tramp stamp is something specific, a usually tribal design on a woman's lower back, shouldn't be visible in Garda uniform so no problem there...

I hate tattoos, I would never trust anyone to come near me with a needle to ink me for the rest of my life. My husband has some on his back and arms and I hate them. With young children, he hates and regrets them now. My sister was living in Australia when she got a feather tattoo, it must have faded in the sun. It's bad.

The lion tattoo on the hand, just no. I see that and cringe, like most tattoos I these days. Doesn't look professional to me so I agree with the Gardai on this.

It's rare to see young people without tattoos these days, I just find the whole trend weird. Jump on the band wagon because everyone else has!

& how does that relate to the discussion... just because you hate something, doesn't make your views important.

Just because you say something, doesn't make it fact... Wearing the Garda uniform makes you approachable... Having tattoo's does not effect that.

Probably not for you, maybe not even for a majority of people. But tattoos do make a cohort of people uncomfortable, you can even see it in some of the comments here, even though boards.ie is a fairly liberal place. I know it's unfortunate for people who do like them and would like to be Gardai, but it's one of the sacrifices required, and it's for a pretty good reason.

I don't really know if having a tattoo is actually intimidating to anyone who is accustomed to violence. Being built like a tank, sure, that is effective. In terms of this whole "tough" appeal, it could be the opposite, like, what is this guy trying to prove?

Yep. Policies on everything, hair colour, piercings, nails, tatoos etc etc

I see nothing wrong with Gardaí having tattoos. There's plenty of them that do have tattoos as well anyway.

But there has to be a point too where the tattoo becomes ridiculous. For example, face tattoos. Now, there's fair and very valid argument that a tattoo has no bearing on the persons ability to do their job. At the end of the day, its just a bit of a marking on the skin.

But if I went to a barracks over something serious and out comes a guard with a standard "inspirational quote" (like "Life Is What You Make Of It, So Make It Free") wrote across their forehead, my initial reaction is this person is a f*cking idiot.

Maybe that's my own prejudice on the matter, but while I have no problem with tattoos in general, or Gardaí having them, I can see the point of having it toned down a bit.

As for the case in question, in all honesty, I can understand a lad of 19/20 getting a tattoo of a lion on their hand if they had a child that was very sick, but your man was pushing 30 when he got his done, and by that age you'd have to have at least thought to yourself "could this affect my job chances"? Given he said he had dreamed of being a Guard, could he have not at least checked up on the rules of the force beforehand? Now, it's not that the tattoo would make him a bad Guard, but at the very least it was questionable planning of a mature man.

I'm with you there, there's not enough respect for gardai. I mean there used to be more respect but then also they used to be able to throw you in the back of a car, drive you to a remote area and beat the head off you, so there's that. I don't really know how they can have respect when they have no teeth because the law doesn't back them against multiple offending criminals and they aren't allowed to just sort people out either. We respect them because we have something to lose, we have to be in work Monday morning but the clowns they have to deal with have nothing to lose, no one is going to care if they get arrested.

Unless your profession is a tattoo artist! Then you’re basically the best advertisement of your own work 😁

Could you elaborate on how a ‘tat’ can be meanginful

What would you think of a birthmark on someone’s hand? Would it soil them?

Irrespective of whether you like tattoos or not... or are worried that a granny might be intimidated by a person with a tattoo...

Why were these candidates interviewed, screened and offered jobs if they didn't meet the criteria of the job. Then they are instructed to make physical changes to their bodies to continue in their new employment...

I would query whether they would have a very serious case to sue over this. If they weren't suitable, they shouldn't have been selected.