David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to respond to the letter and the response we received from the superintendent on behalf of the Garda Commissioner. This goes back to questions I put to the Commissioner on an individual. Her name is in the public domain but I will not use it. It concerns an individual who was arrested on suspicion of fraud relating to sick leave. At the time, it was an extraordinary situation where proper due process was not followed. There was no proper internal process followed where the person would have an opportunity to account for herself. It seems it went straight to a criminal investigation. A very strange arrest was made and then the case went to court where it was dismissed.

We asked the Garda Commissioner several questions on process. I am not satisfied with the responses we got from the Garda Commissioner. I have no problem with the first two responses because he cannot be across every detail of every case. He was not aware that the individual in question had made a further complaint and he was not aware of a mediation process. He accepted that when he was before us.

However, another issue concerns the exit survey the individual did. My understanding is that she claimed bullying occurred. We asked whether this was a pattern in this particular Garda station. We asked for a breakdown of the exit surveys and whether any instances of bullying or harassment had been cited. We asked that the response include a breakdown for Store Street Garda station. We were not looking for individuals’ details just the data. The response is that An Garda Síochána has no record of any person citing bullying and-or harassment in an exit survey. It is qualified, however, by stating that exit surveys are conducted by local management and there is no organisational policy in place in this regard. That does not answer the question. It may well be that there are such instances but that they are not logged at a local level and the data are not collated. We need to tell the Garda to go back to the superintendents in the Garda stations and local managers and have them provide the data. If there is no structure in place for collating data, that is not our problem. That is the Garda's problem.

We also asked for information on the number of cases where civilians and members of An Garda Síochána were arrested for suspected fraud relating to sick notes. The response is that between 2016 and 2019, three disciplinary investigations were undertaken to investigate allegations concerning the altering of medical certificates and the claiming of allowances while on sick leave. We would not stand over any that if there were instances. It does not answer the question, however, as to whether any of these cases led to criminal investigations. I am taking from the reply that the answer is "No" apart from this one case.