Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, Kathleen O’Toole confirmed the suspicions of many, namely, that the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland is a fig leaf to divert attention away from the crisis in Garda management. She said that the commission's task is not to scrutinise the performance of individuals and that Garda management inherited a poisoned chalice. However, she forgot to tell us that the current Commissioner was part of the poison when she got the job in 2014.

Why did the board appoint someone who was part of the problem? The head of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring, said last week, "I would have thought you could have this commission done and dusted by December 1st if they just sat down and read the [inspectorate's] reports,". She went on to say that there was no guarantee that the report delivered by the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland in September 2018 would be acted upon. The head of the Garda Inspectorate, Robert Olson, has said that previous reforms identified had not been implemented. He said, "No-one had made the change happen".

In recent weeks, things have got so bad at Garda headquarters that a decision was made to grant a barrister and junior counsel to the Commissioner and to a senior assistant commissioner at the expense of the State. They cannot even be in the same room without being lawyered up as a result of the failure to resolve issues around the complaints made by the same assistant commissioner, including those relating to interference in the interview process for the Commissioner's job in 2014. This was despite the expenditure of tens of thousands in consultancy payments to a company to investigate the issue – a job that was never sent out to tender.

Interestingly, the same interview panel that trawled the world before deciding Nóirín O'Sullivan was the best person to replace Martin Callinan included Josephine Feehily, who, in her role as head of the Policing Authority, failed to recommend the removal of the Commissioner; it included Kathleen O'Toole, who yesterday indicated that she wanted to take the heat off Nóirín; and it also included Vivienne Jupp, former executive at global management consultancy Accenture, a company that benefited from multimillion euro contracts with An Garda Síochána. Vivienne Jupp was also instrumental in establishing Cyril Dunne as chief administrative officer in An Garda Síochána. He was among the first to be made aware of the Templemore scandal.

Yesterday, the outgoing Taoiseach said that if a Minister were in charge of a calamity like that at the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, that Minister would be sacked immediately . The Tánaiste might find herself heading up a different Department in a few weeks' time. The current Commissioner has given us more than enough proof that she is not the person to bring An Garda Síochána forward. These might be the last weeks of the Tánaiste in the Department of Justice and Equality. Will she not consider doing what needs to be done in the best interests of An Garda Síochána? Legislation allows for the Minister for Justice and Equality to remove the Commissioner when it is in the best interests of An Garda Síochána. It certainly would be.

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