Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the many Senators who made contributions to this very important debate. It is important to note that we have been well served by the Garda Síochána since independence in 1922. I am always conscious of that because my maternal grandfather joined the force in 1922 and rose to the rank of chief superintendent. I am reminded of a divisional meeting he attended in Limerick in the early 1920s. Of 26 senior officers photographed, four of them were dead by the end of the 1920s, having been assassinated. That is a timely reminder of how the force has served this country since independence. It was unarmed and its peer group was often threatened and shot. My grandfather had to carry a weapon for most of his life even when he ceased being a member of the force because of the threat placed upon members throughout their careers and, in some cases, afterwards.

We need to put firmly on the record that the Garda force has served this country extremely well, especially given that it is an unarmed force and the difficult circumstances in which it found itself on independence, namely, in a civil war. A cataclysm such as the Civil War placed huge pressure on officers in its aftermath to serve the State loyally and to put the State's interests above and beyond their own personal opinions and prejudices or political views of one kind or other.

It is important to recognise that the Garda force has never become a sectarian force or succumbed, as virtually all police forces around the world have, to the culture of the drugs gangs. There is very little penetration of our force by the evil drug dealers who have, in many instances globally, corrupted forces and, in some locations around the world, hollowed them out. That has necessitated hugely painful investigation and inquiry and complete restructuring. One can think of a number of such forces. In the 1980s, the Hong Kong police force had to restructure itself substantially because of the activities of criminal gangs and the perception that it had been deeply penetrated by these drugs gangs or other types of dealing gangs. That has not happened here.

However, that is not to minimise in any way what we have read thanks to Mr. Justice Fred Morris and his report. This is a ground-breaking report. It has, in a sense, brought into a new era the professionalism of the force. The force should have perhaps been reformed in the 1960s and 1970s along the lines it has been reformed today. That would have happened were it not for the conflict in the North of Ireland. A huge security paradigm had to operate for all officers. There was a huge resource constraint and pressure on the force because it had to service the many needs of the conflict in the Border counties. I say that not to mitigate the effect of this report.

The report has come as a huge shock to everybody in this House. Mr. Justice Fred Morris has done a fabulous job for us and I very much appreciate the kind comments made about the now retired judge on his contribution and work. I do not want to make a political point but it is worth saying from a taxpayer's perspective, the Morris report cost €70 million and produced eight timely and regular reports since 2002. At the same time, the Mahon report cost €300 million. That tribunal was set up in 1997 and it has not produced as many timely reports.