Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The report in The Sunday Times was disturbing and alarming for citizens across this State. To put it kindly, we have had a problematic 18 months in terms of public confidence in the Minister's ability to preside over and assist, depending on what body it is, the GSOC or An Garda Síochána. When previous issues came into the public domain relating to the GSOC, the Minister's instinct was to defend the system. What I found remarkable was the fact that the Department wrongly briefed the Taoiseach yesterday and again today about section 80(5) of the Garda Síochána Act. It does not require the GSOC to pass on that information It says it may pass it on. It is at the GSOC's discretion.

The GSOC has a responsibility to report to this Oireachtas and does so, as the Minister knows, through the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions. The GSOC was established under the 2005 Act and followed the Morris tribunal in my home county of Donegal. This tribunal revealed gross abuses of power by some gardaí, from the rank and file up to senior level. It demonstrated the need for change in areas like the handling of informers and false arms finds. Another issue was the terrible ordeal of the McBrearty family. This is the context in which the Garda Síochána Act, the GSOC and the Garda Síochána Inspectorate were introduced. From the outset our party argued very strongly that the GSOC did not have the requisite powers to do its job. For example, it does not have oversight of the Garda Commissioner, as is the case with the ombudsman and the chief constable in Northern Ireland. The GSOC did not have access to the PULSE system to get directly to issues without somebody looking over its shoulder. Another issued related to the confidential recipient. Gardaí did not have the ability to report matters of major concern directly to the GSOC.

In case there is any doubt the GSOC did not have the requisite powers, we can see the issue in its own publication. Last year, the GSOC completed its public interest investigation into the handling of informers by An Garda Síochána and our intelligence services. It was a painstaking investigation that took years to complete although it did not need to take so long. In this report, the GSOC revealed the appalling lack of co-operation from senior Garda management with this very important investigation. What was it about? It concerned the dropping of charges against a major drug dealer without explanation and this person allegedly being handled by An Garda Síochána to entrap others. Those were the allegations in the public domain. They could not have been more profound yet in some cases, the GSOC never received documentation and in other cases, it took years.

What the GSOC revealed was outrageous. It also revealed that the lessons of the Morris tribunal had not been learned in respect of the handling of informers, which was a core issue at the tribunal, and the retention of contemporaneous notes where people could check what had happened and where it could be clearly demonstrated if one was innocent. These were significant issues. When that was revealed, the Minister did not say a word of criticism regarding senior management in An Garda Síochána but kept schtum. When he was challenged repeatedly by my party, he kept schtum. He said he was waiting on the response from the Garda Commissioner. It took months.

People will argue that the Minister has too close a relationship with the Garda Commissioner and that the system of policing in this State is not healthy. The relationship between Government and senior Garda management is too close. The Government has the ability to appoint senior Garda management, which is an issue. We need to see a truly independent policing authority with its own independent budget allocated, of course, from taxpayers' money. That policing authority would then be accountable to this Oireachtas and a policing board, as is the case in Northern Ireland. We need to change our policing model, which is unhealthy. We have seen repeated examples of resistance to change and criticism - serious criticism in some circumstances.

This brings me to the penalty points debacle which we have seen played out in the Committee of Public Accounts. The two whistleblowers were pretty much vindicated by the report from the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Let us go back to the start. Two officers discovered that the system was not working and that a considerable number of people were having their penalty points written off with no apparent explanation. It was one rule for the 70% of people who paid their penalty point fines and another rule for others. Basically, access to friends in certain places could get points written off.

This was a serious matter that the officers reported to the confidential recipient. The transcript read into the record by Deputy Wallace and repeated in the Chamber by Deputy Niall Collins was interesting. I understand that it may enter the public domain in the near future. The officers were stonewalled. The matter went to the Commissioner's office, was investigated and ran on and on until the two whistleblowers eventually approached the relevant authorities. Under the Garda Síochána Act, they were permitted to take the matter to Members of the Oireachtas, as they did. They also brought it to the attention of the Road Safety Authority, RSA, the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Departments of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the Taoiseach.

Finally, the Minister made a decision. It was not to hold an independent inquiry into a serious matter with a significant amount of supporting documentation. Rather, it was to hold an internal Garda inquiry. The police investigating the police is not acceptable. There is no question mark over the integrity of the Assistant Commissioner, Mr. John O'Mahoney, but the perception was of police investigating police. It was a bad decision.

When the publication was reported, the Minister went out to the plinth and, with the Commissioner, was more interested in having a go at the whistleblowers and calling them reckless and wild than in actually dealing with the substantive issues. Of course, that could not be allowed to sit for too long. The subsequent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General revealed that one in five motorists accused of road traffic offences was getting off, that a half of all summonses were not being served and that the scale of the problem identified by the whistleblowers was real and even wider than they had believed.

This was a serious matter, yet the Minister still would not hold an independent inquiry. I challenged him in the Chamber on that after the report's publication. I almost pleaded with him. The matter then went to the Committee of Public Accounts and the rest, as they say, is history. The Minister has finally referred it to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission but considerable damage has been already done. The Minister must reflect on the model of policing and his relationships.

Our party is conducting a comparative analysis between the policing and ombudsman models of the State and the models in the North and elsewhere in Europe. When it concludes, we will introduce the Garda Síochána (amendment) Bill 2014, which will contain proposals for change. Deputy Wallace did likewise last year and I commend him on the significant amount of work he did in that regard. I understand that others are also considering making proposals. We need fundamental change to both of our models.

Let us be clear - the overwhelming majority of members of the Garda Síochána are doing a fantastic job. There is no question mark over them. They are on the front line defending our communities. In many instances, they are heroes. However, they feel let down by the cutbacks and the station closures. This point takes me back to the relationship between the Minister and the Commissioner. The latter echoes the Minister's language. He would call such measures "modernisation" or "smart policing" instead of acknowledging that they were really cutbacks - fewer Garda vehicles, stations and personnel. The number of gardaí will probably fall below the 13,000 template. It is an unhealthy relationship. We need change.

As the Minister knows, the GSOC will appear tomorrow before the committee I Chair. We will put questions to it and seek clarification. For example, why did the GSOC believe it needed to consult its sister organisation in Britain, why did it believe it needed to bring foreign security consultants into the State under the cover of darkness and why did it not trust the apparatuses of the State? One can come to only a single conclusion. We will tease through these questions tomorrow, but the conclusion is that there is a serious level of distrust between the Minister's office, the office of the Garda Commissioner and the office of the three GSOC commissioners. This distrust must end.

Tomorrow, we will probe the protocols of co-operation to see how they are working. I understand there are ongoing difficulties in accessing documentation, but we will tease through that matter tomorrow.

When all of this is over and we have established the facts, what the citizens will need is an independent police force in which they can have confidence from top to bottom. They will need an ombudsman's office that has all of the powers it needs to protect the public and to watch the watchers. Lessons need to be learned.

The only way to know definitively the level of the security breach at the GSOC is to publish the report of the security consultancy firm. I hope the GSOC will agree to facilitate that publication. When we see the report, we can have it independently verified.

We need an independent inquiry into this matter. The public will demand it and need to know the full facts. They feel distrust, as they have seen too many issues arise. The hearings of the Committee of Public Accounts did little for their confidence. I will leave it to the Government to suggest what form the independent inquiry should take, be it a judicial review or an international body, but someone who is truly independent of the GSOC, the Department and the Garda must examine the issue and make a ruling. For all of our sakes, I hope it will be found that spying did not take place.

Regardless of what happens, there must be fundamental change. Our party will put that to the Minister and engage constructively with him.

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