Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for coming to the House today. I watched her speak in the Dáil for the past couple of hours and I appreciate her taking the time to come here. This cannot be an easy time for her. The last paragraph of her speech says a lot about her time in office. She referred to the various organisation that she set up to oversee the running of the Garda Síochána, and I compliment her on doing so.

I put on record this evening my deep respect for and express my gratitude to the ordinary gardaí who are on the streets tonight risking their lives for the Tánaiste, me and everybody else. What has happened in this country over the past couple of days must be soul destroying for these people. The Tánaiste and I know that many gardaí remain on duty after their shift has ended, etc., and to think that 1 million breath tests never happened, we are facing 14,700 reviews of court proceedings, some of which may finish up in the High Court, and that people may have lost their jobs as a result of penalty points given to them by the courts. This entire scenario is totally unacceptable. I have put on record my desire for the Garda Commissioner to step aside. I asked her to step aside when the McCabe tribunal started and she should definitely step aside now. The current issue does not lie just at her feet, however. There is a layer of people below the Tánaiste who have operational control of An Garda Síochána and they have not done their jobs. That layer has been negligent somewhere along the line.

How have we reached this situation? I have heard people today shout for the Tánaiste's head to roll, with which I disagree because she does not have operational control of the Garda Síochána and cannot be there morning, noon and night. There are people charged with responsibility in every Garda station in this country. This issue goes to the root of the organisation.

I believe that austerity measures might have hurt the force and that it might have tried to keep records going just because it did not have the personnel. I have no doubt that austerity measures have in some way impinged on what has happened. The public will take time to recover from this saga but the morale of An Garda Síochána must be restored now. Morale cannot be restored by those who are already in charge because they have made a total mess of the job that they were entrusted to do by the Tánaiste in her capacity as Minister for Justice and Equality. They have failed the country, they have failed their superior officer who is the Garda Commissioner and they have failed the Minister. The blame does not just lie with the Garda Commissioner. I do not believe that any of these people should be in their jobs today. They should all be sent on gardening leave until we get to the bottom of what happened. Those who have turned a blind eye need to have their contracts revoked and to be sent on permanent leave. We do not need those sort of people in the country.

I received an e-mail today from a woman who outlined that her son finished up in court because he got into a small fracas after a few drinks. Last night, we learned that a woman from Dublin was escorted by two gardaí to Limerick jail because she did not pay a fine of €350. Where does that behaviour fit into fraudulent breath tests, which is what happened? For the past few days the Tánaiste must have been devastated by what has been done. As Minister, she trusts people to do their jobs, but these people have let her down badly. She has found herself in here and in the Dáil having to stand in front of a line of opponents demanding answers to questions that she could not possibly answer. She probably does not even know the number of questions that remain to be asked. Once we pull back the curtain on this dirty little secret, it will become more apparent. The Garda Commissioner said the other day that as we start to move to reform the Garda, there will be other stories and disasters. I do not know what the Tánaiste can do about this matter. I do not believe that she can handle the problem by continuing to work with people in whom she has now lost faith. She must have lost her faith in them. I do not believe that she can trust them to bring about the reforms that she has tried to make. The Minister has put agencies and the Policing Authority in place. I hope that the Policing Authority will say to her in the next few days that it does not have confidence in the senior management of An Garda Síochána and ask her to appoint a caretaker to look after the organisation until it solves the problem.

People said to me last night that ordinary gardaí were happy enough to have the breath tests fiddled with, but the problem does not lie with the ordinary gardaí on our streets because they do their jobs. If numbers have been played with, it was not by them. If the PULSE system is wrong, somebody somewhere should have reported it to the Minister months, years or decades ago because the PULSE system has been in place a long time.

The bottom line is that we need action so people must step aside from their roles right now and allow the Minister to appoint people to check the system who are impartial and independent of the Garda. I hope a firm of accountants will be appointed tomorrow morning to carry out a root and branch review. I listened to "Morning Ireland" this morning and heard that An Garda Síochána was informed that there was a problem with breath tests on 7 July 2014. The force kept that information from the Minister, me and everybody else for three years.

I appreciate the latitude shown by the Cathaoirleach. I am confident that the Tánaiste will fix this problem but I do not have confidence in those in whom she has placed her trust.