You cannot be in the room. There are things you can do from outside it, and they matter more than you would think.
Emergency line: 087 122 3080, answered day and night, including weekends and bank holidays.
Tell us where you are and we will call you straight back.
If someone is in a Garda station now, calling or WhatsApp is far faster than this form.
If you have just had the call, start here and do these in this order. It takes about ten minutes.
If they rang you, ask before anything else. If you do not know, see the next section. A detained person is entitled to have someone notified of where they are, so in most cases the information reaches you.
Full name, date of birth, and the station. That is enough for us to make contact. Call 087 122 3080 or message us on WhatsApp, at any hour. Do not wait until morning: the first interview is usually long before it.
Give the firm’s name. This is often the fastest way to stop an interview beginning before advice has been given, and it goes into the custody record with a time against it.
Not with them, not with anyone else who may be involved, and not in a message. Calls from a station are not private, and anything said can find its way into the case.
Times, names, what you were told the arrest concerns. You will be asked, and in four hours you will not remember it precisely.
See the bail section below. It is much easier to do this now, at home, than at nine the following morning outside a courtroom.
The commonest first problem: you know something has happened and you do not know where they are.
A detained person is entitled to have a person reasonably named by them notified of their detention and of where they are. If nobody has contacted you and you believe someone has been detained, that is a reasonable thing to ask a station about.
Knowing the boundary saves hours of the wrong kind of effort.
The last one matters most. Advice given by a family member with the best intentions is the source of a great many avoidable problems.
If the person has a medical condition, is on prescribed medication, has a mental health difficulty, or does not speak English fluently, tell the station and tell the solicitor. Each of those changes what should be happening in there, and the station may not know unless someone says so.
Nothing appearing to happen for six hours does not mean nothing is happening.
Detention periods are set by the power the person is held under, and for most arrestable offences the initial period is six hours, extendable to twenty-four in stages. Interviews are time-limited and there are breaks between them, so a detention that looks static from outside is usually a sequence of short interviews with long gaps.
The detail that catches families out: detention can be suspended overnight for a rest period, and suspended time does not count towards the total. So someone arrested on a Saturday evening can still be in custody on Sunday afternoon without anything having gone wrong or any limit being exceeded. If you were told “about six hours” and it is now twelve, that is very often the reason.
Our page on what happens after an arrest sets out the sequence hour by hour, including the three ways a detention ends.
Different rules apply, and the most important of them concerns you.
A parent or guardian must be notified, and an appropriate adult should be present for interview. A child should not be interviewed alone. If you are told an interview is proceeding without an adult present, say clearly that you object and ask for it to be recorded.
Being present as the appropriate adult is not the same as being the child’s solicitor, and it does not replace legal advice. The adult is there for the child’s welfare and to help them understand what is happening; the legal advice is a separate thing, and the child is entitled to it in the same way an adult is.
There are also diversion routes for children that do not exist for adults, and whether one is available is worth raising early rather than late. Related: our page on child care law.
If you are the parent, you are entitled to be there and you should be. Do not accept being told to wait outside while a child is interviewed, and do not rely on being present instead of getting the child a solicitor.
If station bail is refused there will be a court application, and this is the part the family does.
If the person is charged and released on station bail, they go home with charge sheets and a court date. If station bail is refused, they are brought before the next available court, which can be a special sitting at a weekend or on a bank holiday, and bail is argued there. That is a hearing with evidence.
An independent surety may be required: a person who undertakes to the court, and who may have to lodge or pledge money. Assembling that on the morning is much harder than assembling it the night before. Have this ready:
Tell the solicitor what you have as soon as you have it, rather than bringing it to court and hoping it is used. A bail application is prepared, not improvised.
All four are natural. All four cause real damage.
Not to ask for help, not to complain, not in a private group. Posts are screenshotted, and social media content ends up in case files with remarkable regularity.
Not a complainant, not a witness, not their family, and not to “sort it out”. Contact of that kind can create a new and more serious problem on top of the existing one, and it can affect bail.
Even good advice from a family member is advice given without knowing what the evidence is, and it can be a great deal worse than no advice at all. That is what the solicitor is for.
By morning the interviews are usually over. The point at which a call helps most is before the first one, which is very often the middle of the night.
What families ring us to ask, usually within the first hour.
Find out which station he is in, then ring 087 122 3080 with his full name, date of birth and the station. Ask the station to record that a solicitor has been instructed. Do not discuss the allegation on the phone or online. If he is under 18, a parent or guardian must be notified and an appropriate adult should be present for interview: he should not be interviewed alone.
Start with the station nearest to where the arrest happened rather than the one nearest their home, ring and ask directly whether the person is in custody there, giving their full name and date of birth. If they are not, ask which station covers that area. A detained person is also entitled to have a person they name notified of where they are, so in most cases the information reaches the family.
You cannot sit in on the interview or speak to them privately while they are detained, and you will not be told what they said or what the evidence is. You can instruct a solicitor on their behalf, tell the station a solicitor has been instructed, and bring necessary medication or clean clothes if they are being held overnight.
Detention periods depend on the power the person is held under, and for most arrestable offences the initial six hours can be extended in stages to twenty-four. Detention can also be suspended overnight for a rest period, and suspended time does not count towards the total, so someone arrested on a Saturday evening may still be in custody on Sunday afternoon without any limit having been exceeded.
Yes. A family member can instruct a solicitor on behalf of someone who has been arrested, and it is one of the most useful things you can do from outside. We need the station, the person's full name and their date of birth. The person in custody confirms the instruction when we speak to them.
A proposed independent surety who is willing to act, with their proof of identity, address and means; a settled address for the accused to reside at; and evidence of ties such as employment, education, caring responsibilities or medical treatment. Give it to the solicitor as soon as you have it rather than bringing it to court on the morning.
The station, their full name, and their date of birth. That is all we need to make contact and find out what is happening. The line is answered at any hour, and the call that helps most is the one made before the first interview, not after it.
General information, not legal advice. This page describes Irish criminal procedure in general terms. Every case turns on its own facts and the law changes. Nothing here creates a solicitor–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied. For advice on your own situation, speak to a solicitor.
Ferrys Solicitors LLP is regulated by the Legal Services Regulatory Authority. Content reviewed by Tony Collier, solicitor. Last reviewed PENDING.
