Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:“notes that:

— 937,000 breath tests that never occurred were falsely recorded on the Police Using Leading Systems Effectively (PULSE) system, and that the existence of a problem in this regard was communicated to the Garda Commissioner, Nóirín O’Sullivan in 2014;

— there were 146,865 District Court summonses for road traffic offences wrongly issued and that as a result 14,700 people were subject to wrongful convictions due to shameful Garda error and were never informed of the error, nor received an apology directly from An Garda Síochána;

— the Garda Commissioner was notified of discrepancies in Garda breath test data by the Medical Bureau of Road Safety in 2014 but did not inform the public or the Policing Authority of these discrepancies until 23rd March, 2017;

— the Garda Commissioner has accepted that An Garda Síochána recorded numbers that were false, and believes that this falsification may not be confined to traffic data;

— the Garda Commissioner failed adequately to explain the cause of these errors;

— high-ranking members of An Garda Síochána, including the Garda Commissioner, have recently been accused of engaging in a systematic campaign to smear the character and reputation of Sergeant Maurice McCabe and other Garda whistleblowers; and

— there has been an erosion of public confidence and trust in An Garda Síochána including a lack of public confidence in the Garda Commissioner and senior Garda management to investigate possible Garda malpractice or corruption;

acknowledges that:

— An Garda Síochána should be held accountable in terms of their adherence to professional and ethical standards;

— section 11 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005 states that:

— a person who holds the office of Garda Commissioner may be removed from office by the Government but only for stated reasons, including:

— the person has failed to perform the functions of the office with due diligence and effectiveness; and

— the person’s removal from office would, in the Government’s opinion, be in the best interests of An Garda Síochána;

— on notifying under section 12 (1) a person who holds the office of Garda Commissioner that the Government intends to consider removing him or her from office, the Government may immediately suspend the person from duty; and

— section 12 (1) (b) of the Garda Síochána Act 2005 further allows that the Government shall give the person an opportunity to make representations as to why he or she ought not to be removed from office;

further notes that Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan has stated that she plans to continue in her position even if there is a Dáil vote of no confidence in her; and

calls on the Government to:

— immediately use the powers available to them under the Garda Síochána Act 2005 to notify Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan that they intend to consider removing her and to suspend her from duty while she receives an opportunity to make representations as to why she ought not to be removed from office;

— independently investigate the involvement of members of senior Garda management in malpractice, corruption and/or the harassment or smearing of whistleblowers;

— urgently review the situations in which people may be convicted for certain crimes on the word of a Garda Superintendent; and

— urgently review how An Garda Síochána can be made democratically accountable to the communities they serve, including the election of democratically accountable bodies empowered to decide on how policing is implemented, how policing resources are spent, and to hold An Garda Síochána accountable for their actions.”

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