Damien English (Meath, Fine Gael)

There has been a fair extension of the time available and there is no rush on us. I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on Garda reform, the reports on which I also welcome. I acknowledge the time and knowledge the reports represent as a body of work. The people whose actions led to the publication of the reports are patriots in the truest sense. The whistleblowers who opened up the system and laid bare its faults did so not because they wanted to do harm or destroy it, but because they could see others doing harm and destroying the system. Those who facilitated the whistleblowers must also be commended, including Senator Higgins and Deputy Howlin. All involved have demonstrated courage and patriotism and we owe them a great deal of thanks.

Speaking of patriots, I note that our gardaí have generally served the State well since its foundation. They have done so day to day and without arms, which circumstance is almost unique in Europe. It is to their credit and in some ways a tribute to their success. While gardaí must have the ability to defend themselves we should try as much as possible to maintain the current system and preserve the type of society in which unarmed policing is possible. The State and the Garda force which has defended it were formed more than 80 years ago. We are already well into the 21st century and must ensure that the values of truth, honour, courage and determination continue to be the hallmarks of Garda service and those who direct and manage it for the next 80 years also.

The concept of public service is inherent in the values set out. Those who have been found to have done wrong failed in their duty and forgot that being a garda is about public service. It is an issue we must consider across the board, from the Garda to the health service and politics and encourage the notion that we are talking here about the desire to serve one's country. If one takes a job as a public servant working for the State, one's first duty is to serve. This has been forgotten in many of our public institutions, including Departments and the Garda, where people have forgotten that their jobs are not about preventing people from obtaining help, but to facilitate them. Public service is about doing the right thing by the country and its citizens. We can set out all the procedures we want for Departments, the HSE and other bodies, but if people do not believe their duty is to serve, we will fail in our goals.

The point has been missed across the board, not just in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and people are forgetting that they are public servants. We have a great deal of work to do to turn that state of affairs around. The Minister is one person who knows about being a public servant and he has a desire to serve. He could do other work anywhere he wanted, which makes him an example of the values we need to instill throughout the ranks in the various arms of the State. The concept of public service is missing at local authority level, in the health service and elsewhere, but people must be encouraged to believe in what they are doing. I hope we can get the message across through education, incentives or by other means. It is very clear in other states that people believe and take pride in public service, no matter at what level they serve. If people believed in what they were doing, we would not need so many investigations and rules and authorities to oversee them. They would have a desire to do the right thing, like the gardaí who first entered the force more than 80 years ago.

I do not refer to the first gardaí for historical or rhetorical purposes, but to emphasise in the context of the reports and the revelations which prompted them that a select but determined few have tarnished the reputations of many. I know many serving and retired gardaí who have done the State and their local communities great service, which should be acknowledged rather than lost sight of in this debate. Those gardaí are disgusted and ashamed at the behaviour of some of their colleagues. The actions of a few should not detract from the hard work of the many. Unfortunately, the revelations have done great damage as did the revelations about the church and professional politics. It is a sign of changing times and such times require reform to keep up with them. We debate reform in the House for everyone else, but do not lead. Our own place of work requires reform in the way we do our business. The House does not always function as the Legislature of a proper democracy should, but if we set the pace, we can direct others to reform too. It is a message for all of us rather than for any particular Minister. The process must be led by those in Government whether its members are drawn from this or the other side of the House. While I accept that it is easy to talk about these matters when one is in Opposition and that things are different when one is in Government, some day soon we will be forced to realise that we cannot expect every other organisation to reform but not ourselves.

Public confidence is vital to any profession that wishes to carry out its work, especially in the areas of law and order. As the lengthy debate on policing in Northern Ireland has shown, communities must have complete faith in the fairness and goodwill of those appointed to look after their interests, be they law-makers or their enforcers. The same is true of religion. As legislators who run or want to run the country, we must do all in our power to restore public confidence in the Garda. The Minister spoke last night about the process restoring pride in the force, which I hope it will. However, he spoke as if the process had succeeded already, which is not the case. This is a work in progress. There continues to be a lack of confidence among the people who must have their faith in the Garda restored. A great deal of the solution will be down to provision of time, effort and resources by the Garda, whose members want to do the right thing. This provision is not always possible for various reasons. Communities must be able to believe that gardaí will do all they can to do what is right and support them. I fear that among some communities there is a them-and-us attitude and gardaí are spoken of as a distant group of people. It should not be like that. Gardaí are part of the community, which is a fact communities must recognise. Communities need the gardaí and both parties must be encouraged to trust each other and work together.

Reform must not be carried out for its own sake. Cosmetic change is meaningless and has no value. Change must be deep and real to ensure that the old values that have worked and in which we all believe remain fresh and central as we go forward. With all due respect to its members, the Government tries to convey the impression that it leads events, but at best it is merely reacting to them. Even this reaction is not always as positive or proactive as the people I represent and I would like. Last night in his opening remarks, the Minister said the subject of the debate was strong action on the part of the Government. While there has been strong action after events, the subject of the debate has been the strong action of a few people who were not afraid to take on the system. I accept that the Minister was not in office when the process started, but we must acknowledge that it was people acting independently who challenged the system and it is to them that we owe our thanks.

Our system of law and order requires complete reform and renewal, not for its own sake, but because a system which has worked historically must change and evolve if it is to continue to be effective. What worked well before will not necessarily continue to work. We must change while maintaining our values. Ireland has changed significantly, its population is growing and it has vast new communities. We have a population that is often imbued with new or strange values fostered by television and cinematic images that are neither realistic nor sustainable.

We have major problems of unmanaged stress and lack of personal self-development and fulfilment which are driving large numbers of people to abuse alcohol and drugs. Drug abuse causes crime as the abusers try to feed their habit and alcohol abuse causes anti-social behaviour in many towns and cities. Those are new realities to which our system must adapt.

We spent a great deal of time lecturing Nationalists and Unionists in Northern Ireland on the reason their policing system was wrong, why their alternatives do not work and suggesting the type of policing structures they should put in place. If these calls are to mean anything we should accept the Patten report in so far as it is relevant to our system. We should seek to implement the recommendations in the Patten report in the Republic. That would be a practical example of North-South co-operation and an important step towards a united Ireland, not necessarily of states or even justice systems but of common values, openness, transparency, accountability and natural justice. Perhaps I seek too much from a Government which in 2002 filleted the rainbow Government's landmark Freedom of Information Act to ensure the revelations of how it bought the 2002 election and then savagely cut back afterwards could not be repeated, perhaps with an eye to the 2007 general election.

The abuses revealed in these reports are unacceptable but we must learn from them and react to them. Gardaí must be open to expertise and skills, including those of management, which do not necessarily come from within their own ranks. Those who have academic, professional or life experience, especially in management areas, should be allowed help their country and donate their time and talents by being able to apply for management positions in the Garda. We must open the force to external talent and make it easier for people to be recruited into the Garda. When they have been brought in, they should be accepted into the club. They cannot be treated differently because they did not come through the same ranks. We have expertise at all levels, something we discussed in a previous Bill where this is allowed. It is possible the Commissioner wants to do that but I want to encourage it. There is a great deal of talent available. People who are trained to a high level but who could not retrain as a garda to get a job at a high level must be taken in at the position for which they have been trained.

Gardaí must be doing what they have been trained to do, that is, police. They should not be tied up with pen pushing and democracy, and the gardaí themselves will say that. Gardaí at local level should be able to avail of knowledge and expertise through the use of community policing, which should exist in every district. Communities should have a greater knowledge of Garda strength in the locality and at the very least be able to suggest how such resources should be prioritised to better serve them. We must have the local police forum.

Garda must be closer to the communities, not in such a way that they are compromised but that they know their communities, the people, the potential blackspots in an area and the potential offenders in a way that helps them to police better. I fear many young gardaí leaving college believe the job involves a certain number of hours a day and then they can go home. Policing is different. Gardaí must be involved in the community. They must engage in it on a constant basis. They must talk to the local shopkeeper and pick up information. I know community gardaí do that but all gardaí must realise that the job is more than simply putting in a few hours every day. It must become their life and they must be in the community listening to and befriending people. Policing is part of all that but I fear that gardaí leaving college have a different view, and that must be examined. It is not all about degrees and other qualifications. It is about having someone with common sense who can do the job in uniform, mixing with the people and preventing crime as well as apprehending criminals. In the past, gardaí who lived in an area prevented crime. It may have been petty crime but they prevented that by being observant. That approach is missing today in many cases, mainly due to the size of populations and so on. I do not necessarily blame lack of resources for that but we should try to get back to that because it worked in the past.

I want clarity on two points the Minister made last night. First, he said the force was now 20% larger than it was in 1997. Second, he stated he had assured the Garda Commissioner that he will not lack the resources to fight crime. That is untrue. To take my town as an example, we have fewer gardaí now than we had in the 1980s yet our population has increased threefold. Without quoting figures or crime incidents and so on, it does not make sense to say there are extra gardaí. The population has grown by more than 20% and it is not a big deal, therefore, to say the force has increased by 20%. The Garda figures do not match the population areas. Perhaps some areas have too many gardaí. I do not know but I know that certain areas have not got the required number of gardaí to do the job right. It is not true to say the Commissioner has enough resources. There are not enough gardaí trained in the use of firearms. Detectives continue to escort money collections when an ordinary garda could do that. That means the detective is unable to do his or her job. Despite the peace process gardaí continue to escort vehicles carrying explosives. I would like to say more on that but I will not because I want to make another important point.

Accountability is not just about Garda accountability. It is also about this process and the way we do business. I asked a number of questions by way of a letter in February 2005 — I will not name the case — to find out how a Garda inquiry into a murder which happened ten years previously was proceeding. It was on behalf of a woman who wanted to find out what happened in her husband's case because there was a lack of information in that regard. I got a response to the letter saying the matter was being looked into. I made frequent phone calls on the matter and also put down a parliamentary question. A letter arrived apologising for the delay and informing me that the Garda report had to be examined. That took four or five months. In July 2005 I was told the Garda report contained a number of irregularities and had to go back to the Garda to be checked. It was a year later, in July 2006, before I got the information on that Garda inquiry report and it was not sufficient. That woman is still waiting for information. She rang me at one stage to give me a three line website address which she said contained the report on her husband's death. That is not an accountable system. It is not a system which helps victims get answers or one which would instill confidence in people. I do not apportion blame to anyone in that regard. I am saying that is the system but it is not a fair one for anybody. I am sure the Minister and other people have better things to be doing than answering my questions but if the system worked I would not have to do that and that poor lady would not be sitting at home ten years later waiting for answers. Perhaps the answers she wants are not available but we should be able to give her answers and bring some closure to the case. It should not be left unanswered. We all have a duty when it comes to reform of the Garda, its structures and the justice system. It is time we started to talk about it in a broader sense because there is much more than just one category.

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