‘Like a badly watered lawn’: Garda supervisor decries officers’ patchy beards

Gardaí on patrol in Dublin. The facial hair critique follows a rule change last year allowing uniformed officers to grow beards if they are kept tidy. Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

To beard or not to beard, that is the question vexing Ireland’s police force in a controversy over officers’ patchy facial hair.

A Garda Síochána supervisor has instructed subordinates to “smarten up” and grow a proper beard or to be clean-shaven and to avoid a ragged in-between look that resembles “a badly watered lawn in a heatwave”.