Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

It is no great surprise that the Cooke report failed to find hard evidence for the bugging of GSOC. It is in the nature of modern electronic surveillance not to leave evidence. The anomaly of the ring-back of the Polycom unit remains unexplained. We are as informed now as we were prior to the report's publication. When the issue arose in February, the reaction of the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, the Taoiseach, senior gardaí and their friends in the media was to ignore the possibility that an important agency of the State may have been put under covert surveillance. It was not even on the radar. In a similar manner, the Taoiseach's response to Deputy Clare Daly when she raised the issue of Corrib yesterday was to refer to outsiders and all sorts of distractions. It was a defensive tactic to undermine opposing opinions and the facts.

Are these people wrong and should we dismiss the Corrib issue and the way citizens in the area were treated abysmally by the forces of the State? I do not believe so. On this side of the House we raised the issue of whistleblowers but we were dismissed, as we were when we raised the penalty points matter. I was told I was a disgrace and we were nearly run out of the Dáil Chamber. We were treated like pieces of dirt, but because of the persistent approach of Deputies Mick Wallace, Clare Daly and Luke 'Ming' Flanagan and me, we have come to a stage at which, unfortunately, there has been a third investigation in ten years involving the Garda, after the Morris and Smithwick tribunals. We must try to address the issue.

I welcome the Minister's indication she will set up an independent police authority and address the question of appointing a Garda Commissioner and other personnel. Without a strong Opposition, that would never have happened, as the whistleblowers would not have had the stamina to take some of the abuse suffered by Maurice McCabe and John Wilson. Their role has been admitted in this Chamber. This is not just about the Guerin or Cooke reports, as the issue involves events aired over two years in this Chamber.

An accusation was made by the Taoiseach that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission had not informed the Minister of its concerns and had hired specialists to carry out a sweep of its offices. It was erroneously stated in the Chamber that there was a legal requirement for GSOC to report this, and as such the victims were portrayed as culprits. There was much emphasis on the possibility of a mole in GSOC leaking information to the media, but a concern in either the Government, the Garda or the media about leaks to journalists is laughable. The report was released by the Government at 8.45 p.m., with certain sources in the media briefed beforehand. The spin was that GSOC was not bugged, although nobody can claim that for certain and we will never know if GSOC was bugged. The real issue is that a body with very limited powers, which by no means had an aggressive approach to investigating complaints against gardaí, felt such antagonism from senior gardaí to its existence that it seriously considered the possibility that it was bugged.

A number of Deputies have praised the role of gardaí, implying that anybody on this side of the House has no respect for the gardaí in our communities. I have worked closely with community gardaí in my area, particularly community garda Paul Leahy when he was beaten up in his home. We took part in a fund-raiser for his cause, and we have also worked closely with gardaí to set up Operation Trident in the Crumlin area. That was an undercover operation which was very successful. I am from a working class community and we have a healthy questioning of gardaí and whom they represent. As a socialist, I see the senior parts of the Garda, the Civil Service and the political establishment as representing the interests of the wealthy in this country and international capitalism throughout the world. There must be transparency and accountability in trying to bring these institutions down to the ground floor, as the further away people are from citizens, the more we see bureaucratic problems and corruption. That is a fact. The more groups and institutions are brought into the community, the more accountable they can be in representing ordinary people.

The Garda is not resourced the way it has been, as Deputy Coppinger noted. In Terenure a German taxi driver who was previously an engineer, and whose skin colour happens to be black, has been terrorised in his apartment over a number of weeks. Last weekend he was nearly burned out, along with the rest of those who lived in the apartment block. The incident was reported in the newspapers but the problem was that gardaí did not arrive in time, and when they came they did not even take statements. There are still many questions to be asked about how gardaí can do their job, if they are meant to take statements, for example, when a person's life has been threatened. My constituency is a working class area and there have been many cases in which we have questioned the role of gardaí or how they approach issues. It is up to us to try to change this and work with the gardaí in the community, on the streets and in other areas. There must be a total change in the role of the State, as well as the question of whom the gardaí represent and support.

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