Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett will not be here, perhaps we might redistribute his time among the rest of us.

I am astonished at the attitude towards the Bill, particularly that of the Government. I know that it is accepting the Bill, but its grudging acceptance is something I do not welcome. I understand it is a very difficult issue for it, having instinctively and blindly backed up An Garda Síochána for decades, only to find that those on whom it had pinned so much faith, without question or challenge, have feet of clay. Accepting the Bill presents a cultural difficulty which, in the wake of the Government's electoral defeat, is even harder. It would have been better if it had come out and welcomed the Bill with enthusiasm and acknowledged that the exposé of what had happened in An Garda Síochána was due to the work of some great whistleblowers, Messrs Wilson and McCabe. It was due to the fact that some great people in the media had gone where others had feared to tread and that one or two Independent Members of the House had pursued the Government and those at the top of An Garda Síochána with great enthusiasm, energy and courage. Their persistence was resisted by the establishment and there was a pact between the Government and the Garda to the last in not accepting the truth that there was a gross injustice and that it was emanating from the top of the Garda in collaboration with people at the top of the Government. That is the reality and the truth. This is not something I say easily or happily. I am not the type of person who knocks the Garda, but I believe that when people at the top hold so much power and when the Government is an unquestioning accessory, we are living in a dangerous place. We were living and are possibly still living in that dangerous place.

My recent experience of the Garda, as both a journalist and a Deputy, has been extremely distasteful. Some months ago I contacted the office of the Garda Commissioner and asked a simple question regarding how much it cost to run the office. I asked one or two more specific questions about costs. Three months later I had not received so much as an acknowledgement of my request. Obviously, it had been binned. When the Garda Commissioner appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts, it provided me with an opportunity to ask him what had happened to my correspondence. He said it would be dealt with. As far as I know, they could not find it and I resubmitted my questions. Because the Garda Commissioner had given a public pledge, his office had to respond and it responded in the most insulting and condescending terms, pleading inaccurate excuses such as reasons of security for not being able to provide any useful information and refusing to answer questions which might have been embarrassing. The replies were those of people who obviously felt they were not only not accountable, but that they had political protection. This was true on both counts. They had political protection at the highest level of the Government and they were not accountable to anybody.

I submitted a further question and received a similar response from both the Garda and the Department of Justice which is equally contaminated by this culture of arrogance. I submitted a question one Friday asking for an early reply on how many of the top gardaí had been politically appointed. I was given the run-around. The question had to go to head office, not go to the press office. Those in head office then had to go all over the place. I said the issue was urgent, but I received no reply. I then made five or six further calls and eventually received a written reply in which I was informed that some 200 of the top gardaí were politically appointed. This means that the top 200 are appointed by the Cabinet and that promotions within that sphere are also decided by it. Could this be one of the reasons for the great sickness at the top of the Garda and the contaminated relationship between the Department of Justice and Equality and the top of the Garda?

It is completely and utterly unacceptable that any garda should be politically appointed. Such a practice is obviously open to abuse. In the recent crisis we saw the result of such political closeness between the Minister and the Garda Commissioner and the refusal of the Government to acknowledge this until it was exposed by an independent reporter. What the Government must do now is not just respond to the Bill by accepting it and doing as it always does and burying it; rather, it must produce its own Bill which must be radical and convincing. It must give up the power it so jealously guards to appoint the Garda Commissioner or anybody else at the top of the Garda. This power must be given to an independent body, one which cannot be accused of appointing people for political reasons.

It is quite obvious that the gardaí at the top have not been appointed on merit which does a great disservice as it means that people the whole way down are affected by this flaw that exists at the very top of the Garda.

As many speakers have said, the criticisms that have been made of the Garda here by Deputies Wallace and Clare Daly, who have done a great job in exposing this, do not apply from top to bottom. I do not speak for them, but that is my view. There are wonderful people working within the Garda but the people at the top have not done them proud and have not done them a fair service. So it is most important that one of the clauses in the Bill is enacted immediately, which is that the Garda Síochána be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. That should be done straight away without controversy. I accept that in the case of security, we can take those reasons out, but otherwise it should be subject to the same scrutiny as every other State body.

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