Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Today is International Women's Day which is rightly being celebrated all over the world, including in the House. There is some irony therefore in the fact that we listened yesterday to two courageous female civilian officers working with An Garda Síochána, Ms Lois West and Ms Laura Galligan, give evidence to the justice committee of how they had endured 15 months of torment because they were doing their jobs. They claim they were put under tremendous pressure by senior Garda management to agree with homicide statistics they knew were wrong. Instead of acting on the concerns of these women, senior Garda management belittled and dismissed them. Their reward for telling the truth was to have their integrity and professionalism attacked. There was a clear attempt to shut down their critical analysis. In remarkable evidence, they told the committee that the misclassification and inaccurate recording of crime by gardaí left some women at risk of domestic violence. This is not about bookkeeping; it is possible that people were actually put at risk. Women may well have been left in a dangerous domestic situation because of Garda errors.

One year ago and at the very time Ms West and Ms Galligan were being frozen out by management, Garda top brass went to the Policing Authority to say there was nothing to look at here and that everything was in order. Knowledge of the misclassification and inaccurate recording of homicides on PULSE is not a new thing. In fact, this has been known about for some time. A review of domestic homicides was initiated almost two years ago in July 2016, the scope of which has since been extended. The issue has been also under examination by the Policing Authority for the past year or so. Every time the issue is examined, further anomalies emerge. There seems to be no determination at any level to get to the bottom of this. We are not talking about petty crime here, but about the unlawful killing of human beings, often women and children in a domestic context, yet we cannot even record those heinous crimes correctly. We have reached a point where the CSO has refused to publish the last few sets of crime statistics reported by An Garda Síochána because of concerns about the accuracy of that information. That the CSO does not have sufficient confidence in the data being provided to proceed with publication is a sad and sorry state of affairs. That alone should have set off alarm bells for the Minister for Justice and Equality.

Last night, the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, issued a statement which would not fill anyone with confidence that the issue will be dealt with comprehensively and for once and for all. Having read that statement, it is not at all clear to me what is actually being done to resolve this very serious problem. It is too much to ask that there be some accountability for this issue? Does the Tánaiste believe these two staff members are owed an apology by Garda management for the way in which they were dismissed, belittled, sidelined and had their professional competence wrongly called into question? Can the Tánaiste tell the House when the debacle around the classification of crime will be corrected? When will the review of homicides, including domestic homicides, be completed and published? When will the public be able to have confidence in the ability of the State properly to record the most serious crimes committed in this country?

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