Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It has been a long while since we discovered that all was not well between the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and the Garda Commissioner. As late as last summer, members of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission were before an Oireachtas committee saying plainly to the Deputies and Senators present that its capacity to investigate complaints against alleged Garda misconduct had been damaged by lack of co-operation from the Garda force. They pointed to the length of time it was taking for the Garda to respond and provide information which was requested in the course of its investigations. They spoke about the protocols in place for the previous six years, which clearly they felt were not working because the ombudsman commission was negotiating with the Garda to revise them.

The obstacles put in its way were never more clear than when the ombudsman commission's office was denied direct access to the PULSE system and was forced to go though gardaí to find information relevant to the inquiries it was investigating. A garda just out of Templemore, therefore, could have total access to the PULSE system but a member of the ombudsman commission could not be trusted to have that access. The Garda Commissioner actually suggested, just as this bugging story broke, that the fact that the security of the ombudsman's office might have been breached was justification to deny its members access to the Garda computer system. Since the establishment of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, the attitude of the force has been strong resentment at the very suggestion that it needs oversight accountability. This attitude was reflected in the recent words of the Garda Commissioner about whistleblowers within the force.

The real question here is whether the Government stands with gardaí against the ombudsman commission or does the Government stand by the proper transparency and oversight that democracy demands of the Garda by the ombudsman commission? Is the Government trying to get to the bottom of the matter in hand and to the core issue of growing public concern, that is, was the independent ombudsman commission bugged and, if so, by whom? How did they do it and, more importantly, why did they do it?

The way the Minister and the Taoiseach dismissed the discovery of bugging of the ombudsman commission's office tells us that before they even had the full information, they sided with the Garda and dismissed the threat without even examining the evidence properly - a knee-jerk reaction. It was a knee-jerk instinct typical of the Minister, Deputy Shatter, and is an approach the public and this Dáil do not like. This is an issue of public trust and confidence but the Minister has served time and again to shatter that. It must be remembered that at the beginning, it was news to us all that the offices had been bugged. When the news broke in The Sunday Times, would it not have been a normalresponse from Government to have had other State offices checked for bugs as well, instead of distracting from the core issue and waffling on about who should have informed the Minister about it and when?

The latest available figures show us that in 2012, the ombudsman commission received 2,017 complaints from the public about Garda misconduct, while the complaints received through the Garda Commissioner amounted to only 72. The GSOC representative at the Oireachtas committee said that they would closely examine a downward trend in the number of these referrals from the Garda Commissioner. They had decreased from 103, which is still a drop in the ocean of the total, in 2010 to just 72 in 2012.

In a democracy, those in charge of a properly functioning police force should be working in close co-operation with those tasked to oversee it. In a properly functioning democracy, the first reaction of a Minister for Justice, on realising that the police force was not co-operating with the body tasked with overseeing it and preventing or investigating its misconduct, would be to introduce support and assist with measures to fix the problem. The Minister did not do that.

The people of this State suspect that this scandal stinks to high heaven. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice and Equality have tried to confuse the issue and tried to turn the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission into the scapegoat, assisted by the Irish Independent which this morning published a story that was completely refuted by Verrimus, the British security company called in by the ombudsman commission to check its offices for bugs when it first suspected their presence at its headquarters.

The bugging of the offices of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, or the suspicion of it, is something the Minister for Justice and Equality should have taken very seriously. The proper response would be to consider the evidence, establish the source of any threat to the office, which means a threat to the democratic brief it fulfils, and to prepare a response to it in conjunction with the ombudsman commission. Instead, both the Minister, Deputy Shatter, and the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, rowed in with the Garda Commissioner, Mr. Martin Callinan, to blame the ombudsman commission for trying to establish if it had been bugged. How did the Taoiseach and the Minister know that this was not an unauthorised action by members of the Garda Síochána? How did the Minister and the Taoiseach know that this threat had not come from a criminal gang?

There are many questions to answer, some of which have been raised by the Labour Party Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Costello, regarding the case of drug trafficker and Garda informant Kieran Boylan. How did the Garda know - how did the Minister, Deputy Shatter, know - it was not something to do with that case? This man is not a small player in the drugs world. He was caught with €2.5 million worth of heroin. The Director of Public Prosecutions decided to drop the charges against him as his trial was drawing to a close. The ombudsman complained that the Garda had deliberately delayed and frustrated its four-year inquiry into allegations that Boylan was allowed by his Garda handlers to continue dealing drugs while he supplied information on the dealers to whom he was still selling. The Minister of State, Deputy Costello, knows in his heart that if he was in Opposition and not in a Labour Party which has devoted itself to propping up this Government he would be joining Sinn Féin and other Opposition Deputies in calling for an independent inquiry into this affair.

How can the decent gardaí who do their best to carry out their duties properly retain the confidence of the public while this latest debacle remains under wraps and not subject to proper public scrutiny? More than 2,000 people per year bring complaints about the Garda to the ombudsman. How are they to have confidence that the GSOC can pursue their complaints in circumstances in which gardaí are not co-operating and the Minister is not fixing this problem? I urge all Deputies to support Sinn Féin's demand for an independent inquiry and to oppose the Government's amendment so that public confidence in GSOC and the Garda can be restored and the matter of possible bugging can be dealt with by those qualified to do so.

See this speech in context