As I referred to last week I am publishing all Garda expense claims in all categories. Google spreadsheets can’t handle a 641,576 row database so I am using Socrata – the data is downloadable from there in a variety of formats.
The data contains anonymized individual expense claims for all Gardai over a 6.5 year period, totaling some €181,605,359.30*. The number of Gardai on the payroll in 2009 was approximately 17,000. The data was anonymized not because it was redacted but because it was the most effective way for the data to be released. Under the Criminal Assets Bureau Act, members of the force who are part of that Bureau cannot be named. In order to expedite the release of the data, I agreed that the column containing names of members of the Gardai generally could be removed – however this does not stop people from seeking it.
Some of the larger individual expense claims appear to be aggregated and relate specifically to the Corrib Gas project.
*Additionally I can’t speak much to the provenance of the data – or how it was exported – but it was from an Oracle system. Indeed there may be duplicate claims if the data was exported in a way related to ‘version history’ of claim. However it is often the case that multiple Gardai will be able to claim precisely the same amount under each category.
what do the headings mean