Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The Garda Síochána Act 2005 explicitly allows the Government to make appointments at superintendent level and above. There is no specification of any qualifications or criteria. The Government can literally appoint whoever it likes without any accountability. In addition, the grounds on which the Government of the day can also seek to remove the senior officers that are at the heart of Deputy Ross’s Bill are flimsy. One could ask whether it is really any wonder that we have such a dysfunctional system, as has been exposed recently, when such a system prevails at the higher echelons. It is perfectly understandable that anyone who wants to rise to those ranks must, in order to get there, curry favour with the political establishment of the day so that they might end up in the right place to get the nod when the time is right. The other side of the equation is that once they get there, the tendency is to reward their masters, those who put them there in the first place. That is incredibly unhealthy in any system which purports to be democratic.

We made the point many times during the recent controversies that much of what happened could not have happened without the dysfunctional relationship - a lawful one - between the former Minister for Justice and Equality and the former Garda Commissioner. It is not that the former Minister for Justice and Equality did nothing when he received the complaints – he did. He went to the Commissioner, asked him what was the story and the Commissioner said, “Don’t worry about it Alan. There is nothing to worry about,” and the former Minister said: “That is grand.” That was a hugely contributing factor to the problem. The politicised nature of the relationship between the Government, and the Garda Commissioner being only accountable to the Minister, was very much epitomised by the “Prime Time” debacle with the former Minister revealing information about Deputy Wallace in order to score political points. It was information he could not have come by accidentally and which could only have been found by a trawl at the behest of the Minister. Deputy Shatter has been found guilty of breaking data protection law in that regard but it is worth making the point.

Accountability is at the heart of the Bill. That is an issue on which we have all focused. Nobody disputes that is necessary. The Government’s response to that is at last we will get an independent Garda authority which will oversee the functioning of the force. I put it to the Minister that such a move on its own is not enough. If we simply put an authority at the top of the force as it is now, rely on those who are currently in management positions to continue to rule the roost and do not have a change in the mechanism for appointments, the problems will replicate themselves. When we say what is necessary is a Patten-style commission, we do so not because we think the Patten inquiry was brilliant and that there are no problems in the police force in Northern Ireland – there absolutely are – but because we need to go back to the drawing board and look at what are the objectives of a modern police service. Now is a completely different time from when the Garda Síochána was selected. One could ask how people should be recruited to the force. The top echelons set the scene and are very influential in picking those who are further down the ladder in terms of who can go forward for promotion. Recruitment and training must be addressed if we are to have an acceptable police force.

I tried to raise the issue of politicised policing with the Taoiseach in the context of the policing of the Corrib gas site.

He either was unable to or did not understand the point or was unwilling to answer it. Instead, he tried to divert the issue by talking about the merits or otherwise of the Shell project, when the question I posed to him was about the policing of it. He spoke about local people protesting as if there was a difference between what the former justice Minister, Deputy Shatter, called tourist protestors and locals. The point, however, was there were no local protestors but local residents who got in the way of a multinational. There is something utterly wrong in An Garda Síochána basically being an organisation for hire to act at the behest of a multinational. There is something utterly wrong in up to 30 gardaí intimidating an elderly woman and her husband to get a pipe down a narrow road when there was no one objecting. All human rights organisations have pinpointed these problems exist.

This Bill is a positive contribution and brings our attention to the top echelons of the force. We have been on record, and will do so again, as stating very few of those in the senior ranks of the Garda will make the grade of a reconstituted force, given that many of them have been involved in some of the most appalling miscarriages of justice and have stood over bad practices.

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