Derek McDowell (Labour)

I understand the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform was scheduled to be here but is delayed because of a bereavement. I understand his mother-in-law died suddenly today. I wish to record my condolences to the Minister and to his wife, Professor Brennan, on their loss.

Like most colleagues I have been relying on press summaries for information on the content of the Morris report. I received a copy of the report this morning and spent a few hours reading selected extracts from it. It has been a salutary experience as the press summaries do not do it justice. The language used in it is striking, the sort one would associate with the militant left or people traditionally antagonistic towards the Garda Síochána rather than a learned member of the Bench. He does not hold back in describing the appalling scandals in Donegal and in condemning many individuals involved. It is important that we record our appreciation for the work Mr. Justice Morris has done in uncovering the scandalous events over a period of years in Donegal.

This was not a series of acts of omission, a case of human frailty, or honest endeavour gone wrong. These were deliberate acts of commission that were obviously corrupt from the start. Mr. Justice Morris points to the use of an informer, and the use of information gleaned from an informer, to progress the careers of individual gardaí. He refers to the destruction of documents by very senior gardaí and while he stops short of calling it a deliberate conspiracy, clearly he has suspicions. The events he describes amount to systematic corruption and he does not hesitate to ascribe fault. He says that it amounts to corruption and-or connivance at the medium level of Garda authority and serious mismanagement at senior level.

This demands a response of all of us. Where appropriate, prosecutions should be brought against individual gardaí who were found to be at fault and who may be suspected of an offence. It is equally important information is used to bring disciplinary procedures as soon as possible. I reiterate the disquiet articulated elsewhere at the initial actions taken by the Garda Commissioner. It does not seem adequate to the Labour Party or the public to allow senior gardaí to retire and to transfer lower ranking gardaí to Dublin. I appreciate that this is not the full response but even as a starting point it seems inadequate.

Perhaps the source of greatest concern is that the report finds the ethos of the Garda Síochána a major problem. Mr. Justice Morris refers to circling the wagons. Earlier this week the chairperson of the Garda Complaints Board referred to a wall of silence encountered when complaints against gardaí are investigated. None of us in this House is naive and we appreciate that a sense of loyalty is a positive thing in a disciplined, largely male, force. If one is requiring gardaí to put their lives at risk combatting serious crime and terrorism a measure of loyalty between colleagues is a good thing. However, there comes a point, as in this case, where loyalty simply serves to cover up wrongdoing, slovenly practice and corruption.

The responsibility for dealing with this resides at management level, from the Commissioner down. The report does not pull its punches, labelling management structures in the Garda Síochána as wholly inefficient and ineffective. An ethos or mindset of watching one's back existed. One did what one was told to do and no more. There was no sense of taking responsibility for getting the job done. If a superior officer told one to look in a particular drawer in order to find something, one did not use one's initiative to look in adjoining drawers. It will come as a great surprise to many lay people that the notion of accounting for duty is apparently foreign within the Garda Síochána. I strongly support the recommendation that this be dealt with and I suggest it is very urgent.

As well as the need for management to change the ethos, there is political responsibility here. That is where the arguments made by Senator Tuffy are relevant. As well as stating that we expect the highest standards, the Minister must also put in place procedures to ensure we get the highest standards. Perhaps 30 years ago we were prepared to give a loose rein to the centres of authority in this State, including the clergy, teachers, the medical profession, the legal profession and the Judiciary. People are no longer willing to vest blind faith in anybody. It is important that we put in place procedures to allow complaints to be investigated and to allow an independent ombudsman to investigate something that stinks. This measure is not permitted by the new Bill. There needs to be a structure that allows policy making that is responsive to the needs of the community, and I am not referring to the consultative forum with local councillors set up under the new Bill.

There is another issue of political responsibility. It is clear from the report that in 1999 alarm bells started to ring in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It is clear from the contribution of Mr. Aylward that the Department started to take the matter seriously when it received parliamentary questions from the Deputy Higgins. It took another three years from that point, until just before the 2002 general election before the Attorney General at the time, now the Minister, and the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, were persuaded to set up an independent tribunal to determine the facts.

We are aware that there are regularly complaints against gardaí. They are processed by the Department, passed on to Garda headquarters, sent to the division and then to the garda against whom the complaint was made. It is an ineffective system. Often the complaint may not be well-founded, sometimes it is a genuine complaint that is not examined, and occasionally one comes across a serious case of systematic corruption.

Let us give the Department and the Minister the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it took until 1999 before it was obvious something was systematically wrong. Following this there was a period of two years when the Minister looked at an Irish version of the appalling vista, decided that it could not be true and then decided that if it was true he would tell no one about it and it would be dealt with internally. There was a responsibility on the Minister to publicise this information and he failed in this duty.