Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

Last Friday, this House heard four hours of statements on the second report of the Morris tribunal of inquiry into the Garda investigation of the death of Richie Barron and the extortion telephone calls to the home of Michael and Charlotte Peoples. The House heard the extraordinary findings of the Morris tribunal that innocent citizens in Donegal had been harassed, intimidated, threatened, bullied, blackmailed, assaulted and framed by gardaí in the course of a murder investigation where no murder had occurred.

The House also heard that senior gardaí in Donegal were complicit or negligent in the sham investigation. The House heard that Garda headquarters had responded inefficiently and ineffectively. In addition, the House heard that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions had succumbed to a bureaucratic and paralysing malaise concerning the whole matter.

The picture of a seriously dysfunctional criminal justice system detailed in this second report by Mr. Justice Morris was mirrored in the first interim report of the Morris tribunal and, we were told in the House last week by no less a person than the Taoiseach, will continue in future reports.

The human trauma and tragedy of innocent civilians being subjected to a criminal conspiracy by agents of the State are the most pressing and immediate concerns arising from the Morris tribunal. These concerns must be addressed in terms of apologies, legal representation and compensation.

For example, I spoke to Sheenagh McMahon yesterday and she is furious that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform gave no commitment on Friday last that he would issue an apology to her and her family. She was previously married to Detective Garda Noel McMahon and has lived a nightmare since 1992. Bombs were made in her house, plots were hatched by gardaí and their informers. She was taken into custody, her children were taken from her and she had a mental breakdown. She made a statement to the Carty committee in 1999, but withdrew it under pressure from gardaí. When she got her files back through a freedom of information request the most important details were garbled through deletions.

Having been rebuffed at every turn by agents of the State and having had her life ruined, Sheenagh McMahon courageously brought her files to the tribunal and told her story to Mr. Justice Morris. Does she and her young family not deserve a formal apology from the State? Will the Minister make a commitment today to give it to her?

Moreover, Mr. Frank McBrearty Jr. told me that in the High Court yesterday the State offered him only a conditional apology. Apparently, the State does not accept that a confession to a murder that never occurred cannot be a confession.

In the long term, the reputation of, and public confidence in, the Garda Síochána have suffered a very serious blow. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has assured us that he has everything under control and that the Garda Síochána Bill 2004 addresses all the issues and covers all the bases, but that is patently untrue. The Bill is an amalgam of provisions lacking in a coherent philosophy. That is demonstrated by the bevy of new amendments we received this evening, many of them in draft form, for Report Stage.

The Garda Síochána Bill is a hybrid that has changed again and again as flaws appeared in one proposal or another. The Minister has put the cart before the horse. Instead of conducting a root and branch examination of the needs of the Garda Síochána, researching best practice abroad and determining a framework for a force that would be relevant to policing needs in the 21st century, the Minister has decided to fill in the widening cracks and put a fresh coat of paint on the surface.

The Minister appears not to recognise that it is insufficient to dismiss wrongdoing as the activities of a few bad apples and then assert that the body corporate is essentially sound. Neither does he recognise that the Donegal scandal is a watershed for the Garda Síochána. It is similar to the corrupt payments scandal for politicians, the DIRT inquiry for the banks and the cases of institutional abuse for the church. The Garda Síochána is the latest pillar of society that has been found to be crumbling.

It is not good enough for the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to allow a chief superintendent to retire and walk away as though nothing had happened, when he was found to have been seriously at fault in the duty of supervision and management by Mr. Justice Morris in the tribunal's first interim report.

It is not good enough that Superintendent Joe Shelley and Detective Superintendent John McGinley will retire on full pension on 31 July 2005 and walk away from their mess. Their management of the investigation into the death of Richie Barron in October 1996 was, in the words of Mr. Justice Morris, "prejudiced, tendentious and utterly negligent in the highest degree".

As Deputy Rabbitte pointed out, Superintendent Shelley has previous form. His track record smacks of incompetence and negligence concerning both the Kerry babies case and the Abbeylara affair. The transfer of five rank and file gardaí from Donegal to Dublin, which was heavily criticised by Mr. Justice Morris, lacks logic and precedent.

Surely the proper response of a concerned Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and, indeed, a concerned Garda Commissioner, should be to send the Morris report and relevant files to the Director of Public Prosecutions and await his decision, rather than signal to all the gardaí concerned that they are being let off the hook?

The Garda Síochána Bill is seriously flawed. Even if it was not flawed, however, it could not achieve what the Minister says it will. No legislation will effect fundamental reform of the Garda Síochána unless the gardaí and the public are brought into the process through consultation and engagement, and a new police culture of service is established.

Good policing is at the heart of crime prevention and crime detection. When the London metropolitan police force was established in 1829 its first commissioners, Rowan and Maguire, wrote:

Every member of the force must remember that his duty is to protect and help members of the public, no less than to apprehend guilty persons. Consequently, whilst prompt to prevent crime and arrest criminals, he must look upon himself as the servant and guardian of the general public and treat all law-abiding citizens, irrespective of their social positions, with unfailing patience, courtesy and good humour.

These sentiments mirror the views of Michael Staines, the first Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who, in 1922, stated: "The Garda Síochána will succeed not by force of arms but by their moral authority as servants of the people." These were brave sentiments at a time when the Civil War had just started and armed men were roaming the country.

In addition to creating an unarmed police force, the founders of the State had got to the core of the issue. Their vision was that the new police would be guardians of the peace and servants of the people, gaining their moral authority from their service, no longer policing the community like the RIC they had replaced, but dutifully serving the community.

The Garda Síochána served the community well throughout most of the 20th century. However, at the beginning of the 21st century there is clearly need to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the force in a modern, urban, rapidly changing and complex society. Serious questions have been posed of the Garda Síochána in recent times, ranging from the present harsh criticism by Mr. Justice Morris of the behaviour of certain gardaí in Donegal, to the failure to tackle the spread of drugs nationwide, the declining crime prevention and detection rate and the rising clamour of public discontent regarding Garda professionalism and commitment. The Labour Party believes the time has come for a root and branch review of the role, structures and operations of the Garda.

It is time to establish an independent commission on policing in Ireland, similar to the independent commission on policing set up under the Good Friday Agreement in 1999 to create "a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole". Its terms of reference would require the identification and the setting up of new structures to ensure accountability independent scrutiny and, above all, partnership with the community.

The new independent commission's methodology would involve a comprehensive consultative process. A public debate on policing in the 21st century would be initiated and the commission would take that debate to the highways and byways of the country where it would engage local communities in parish halls the length and breadth of Ireland. Equally those professionally involved in policing at every level would be consulted and best international practice would be ascertained. Simply lecturing the Garda Síochána and enacting legislation will not lead to progress. Gardaí must be invited to come on board and engage in inclusive debate. As P. J. Stone of the GRA said yesterday, the approach must be holistic, not piecemeal.

The findings of the Patten commission on policing constitute a valuable resource and reservoir of material that can be drawn from and adopted. The consultation process is crucial. A lasting new police culture of service can only be delivered if a sense of participation, responsibility and ownership is engendered through the consultative process.

Deputy Rabbitte referred to the cosy cartel that is the relationship between the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Garda Commissioner and to the proposal in the programme for Government in 1982 to establish a Garda authority to act as a buffer to protect the Garda Síochána from any undue political interference on the one hand and the need for proper control and accountability on the other. Such a body would address planning, budgeting, reporting, promotions and oversee the administrative and effective management of the Garda Síochána.

In his first report Mr. Justice Morris decried "the promotion to senior ranks of persons who were unwilling or unable to give their vocation the energy and aptitude that it demands". Senior Garda promotional opportunities, in the gift of the Government of the day, are not the way forward for rewarding merit. The present Garda Síochána Bill will not change this procedure, despite what the Minister has said. In the same interim report, Mr. Justice Morris pointed out the total ignorance of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and his Department of what was happening in the Garda Síochána at any given time, that they were in the dark and entirely dependent on the information supplied to them from Garda headquarters and that they had no way of checking its accuracy or validity.

Deputy McDowell's response to Mr. Justice Morris's plea for proper oversight structures to be established was to introduce a Garda inspectorate, a body that would be the eyes and ears of the Minister, would be directed in its work by him and would report back to him. It would be the Minister's personal spy network within the Garda Síochána. In this proposal the Minister sees his role not as a policy-maker or legislator but as a sort of zealous despot. I assure him that nobody will be hated so much within the Garda Síochána nor damage Garda morale more than the body that will became known as "McDowell's inspectors". They will go into Garda folklore like the Broy Harriers of a different era.

In his first report, Mr. Justice Morris criticised the Minister's proposals for an ombudsman commission as "cumbersome and time consuming". Again in the current report, he returns to this important matter and states: "The Tribunal is much concerned by the lack of any independent body to receive legitimate concerns about Garda behaviour. The provisions of the Garda Bill need to be reviewed by the Oireachtas."

Unfortunately, the Minister intends to press on regardless with his heavily criticised three-person ombudsman commission. A multi-member commission lacks the clarity of identification and responsibility of a single person commission, lacks decision-making procedures and restricts independent access to Garda stations. It will have some gardaí conducting investigations into Garda wrongdoing. The proposed ombudsman commission is engulfed confusingly in a massive 50 sections of "dos" and "don'ts" in the Garda Bill and will only have a fraction of the resources and personnel allocated to the superb one-person ombudsman in Northern Ireland.

The old discredited Garda complaints body needs to be replaced by a robust, totally independent structure that can engage in investigations as well as receive complaints, that can look to past as well as to future transgressions and that is directed and led by a single ombudsman.

The work of an ombudsman would be all the easier if the 1979 recommendations of the Judge Barra O'Briain committee were implemented, namely, that all detention and questioning in Garda custody should be the subject of audio and video-recording. These valuable recommendations of a quarter of a century ago should be placed on a statutory and mandatory basis in either the Garda Síochána Bill or the forthcoming Criminal Justice Bill.

The Garda Bill is silent on education and training. The Minister can scarcely call the Garda Síochána Bill fundamental reforming legislation if he totally fails to address the training and educational needs of a modern police force. Education and training of Garda recruits have been carried out in Templemore college, County Tipperary since the formation of the State. Templemore has served the country well and is internationally respected for the quality of its work. It is located in a rural idyllic setting which is conducive to tranquil learning. The Minister has recently decided to provide a four-storey extension to enable the extra 2,000 gardaí to be recruited and trained over the next couple of years.

It is time we reviewed the role of Templemore as the sole centre for training and education for gardaí. An historic opportunity currently exists to locate a second Garda education and training centre in Grangegorman on the north side of Dublin. The Dublin Institute of Technology is building the largest third level college in the country on the site and the enabling legislation is currently going through the Oireachtas.

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