Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this evening's debate on the Garda Inspectorate report. The Minister finally, belatedly, gave a conditional apology today for impugning the integrity of two fine Garda officers. He stated: "If any upset was caused I hope that correcting the record today will put the matter to rest", and continued by stating "I apologise for any offence that may have been caused". This apology does not have much meaning, as the Minister was backed into a corner before he would apologise, and the act was in no way sincere. The Labour Party trumpets itself as the watchdog of the Government, but it took a Fine Gael Minister to call on the Minister for Justice and Equality and former Garda Commissioner Callinan to retract statements which sparked the series of events that have led to this.

Was that the case? It now appears obvious that the revelations about the bugging of Garda stations are what forced the Garda Commissioner's resignation. I wonder, if the imminent disclosure of the transcripts of bugged phone calls through discovery in the courts was not happening, whether we would even be hearing about this issue. The Minister's position is untenable because of his dealings with the whistleblowers - notwithstanding the conditional apology - as well as his undermining of GSOC, his use of confidential information against Deputy Wallace and now the taped phone calls at Garda stations. These indicate that the Minister is not the person to lead the Department.

The whistleblowers have been vindicated by the report of the inspectorate and not the Minister's statement. Because of this report they are now beyond reproach, if there was anyone, bar the Minister and the former Garda Commissioner, who did not believe them. Garda John Wilson and Sergeant Maurice McCabe made accurate claims regarding grave wrongdoings in the fixed charge processing system. Not only that, but they went through the proper channels, contrary to what the Minister stated in the Dáil at the time when he argued that the whistleblowers did not co-operate with an internal Garda inquiry on penalty point cancellations.

The inspectorate report states: "The inspectorate was told by senior Garda staff, that but for the public scrutiny, the extent of the deficiencies within the fixed charge processing system would not have been detected." That is not down to anything done by the Minister about these allegations but rather to the proper work carried out by the Garda whistleblowers. It is now up to the criminal justice working group, made up of all the fixed charge penalty points system stakeholders, to oversee and facilitate the implementation of the recommendations in the report. Judging by its content, there is much work to be done to rectify the shambles that is the fixed charge penalty system.

It turns out that Letterkenny Garda station in Donegal was one of 27 stations for which gardaí in 2007 sought a system to automatically record telephone calls and radio traffic. Will we now see convictions being overturned because of the illegal operation of the system in Donegal and other parts of the country? We can consider that the Morris tribunal into the activities of some gardaí in Donegal heard evidence that gardaí had bugged the station to listen to the conversations of detainees and people who were wrongly arrested. These activities were known for a long time. I remember at the time of the Morris tribunal that the only concern in official circles was to ensure that it was emphasised that this was a Donegal problem and existed nowhere else in the country. That was a lost opportunity for real and meaningful change in the Garda Síochána.

Reform from the top down is required to boost the morale of the force. An independent Garda authority would go some way towards introducing accountability, but the future appointment of commissioners must be examined as part of an overall reform. We know there is so much more to this, and overall reform is required with increased transparency and accountability. There are still many questions that need to be answered. I do not believe this is the Minister to guide the needed reforms through, and by his actions he has shown he is not fit to carry them out. I recognise the fantastic job that the vast majority of gardaí do on a daily basis in these hard times, but we also know that much change is needed now, on a much wider scale than we could have ever imagined, so that the force can do the job it was supposed to be doing all along. Those many gardaí working conscientiously to deliver effective policing deserve proper reform of the organisation. They need that new start now and they deserve the chance for it to happen under new leadership.

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