Garda held back by culture ‘fear and blame’, says senior officer

The Garda does not need new senior management to achieve cultural reform but the climate of fear and blame needed to be dismantled, according a senior officer in the Garda Inspectorate.

Replying to questions from Senator Frances Black at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice yesterday, acting deputy chief inspector Éimear Fisher said “it’s not necessary to have new leadership to have cultural change” in the Garda.

“In the organisations in New Zealand and Australia where there has been significant cultural change across very complex and very challenging cultural issues, it was the sitting police commissioner that drove that change,” she said.

“So I think what is required is a clarity of the vision in relation to the culture that’s required; either a restatement of the values that are there at the moment or at least a rebranding of them.

“And a clear focus and a clear plan, which I believe is included in the [Garda’s] modernisation and reform plan, to deliver that.”

However, Ms Fisher said she was concerned that a blame culture and fear in the Garda, felt even by senior officers, was stifling positive change.

Damaging

“The blame culture [relates to] the hesitancy to use initiative and the hesitancy to take action in certain circumstances because if one put one’s head above the parapet and if you did something wrong that you’d be blamed,” she said.

“It could be career threatening, career damaging and so on . . . it is a situation that hinders initiative and there has to be a scope for leadership and initiative and encouragement of initiative.”