Politics

Who guards the Guards?

Inside Politics: The Morris Tribunal should have been a wake-up call over the Garda

In 2008 the Morris Tribunal made findings of “insubordination and indiscipline” in the Garda

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Harry McGee
Tue Apr 4 2017 - 09:03

Juvenal sounds like the nickname of a Brazilian footballer, but he was actually a Roman poet who coined the catchy phrase: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

In bog Latin it reads: Who guards the Guards?

It is an important question because in any democratic society we have to make sure that those who are asked to protect the people must themselves be held to account.

In the media, we are obsessed with personality, and most attention has focused on Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan. But the problem did not begin with her and will not end with her. It goes much deeper than that.

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A former editor of this newspaper, Conor Brady, wrote a well-argued opinion piece in the Sunday Times at the weekend. He reminded us of the Morris Tribunal in 2008 and its findings of "insubordination and indiscipline". The tribunal found the Garda was "losing its character as a disciplined force".

That should have been a wake-up call, but there was little done. There was insufficient political will, and asking big organisations to change the fundamentals of what they do is like asking a man from Tralee to become a Dublin supporter. It just does not happen.

Big State bodies are useless at reform and cannot do it themselves. Part of the problem is they are so enmeshed in the culture that they cannot see its faults and its flaws.

Bad practices and poor organisation have become routine and accepted. Loyalty is also valued above efficiency, and that makes it harder for people inside the organisation to conduct meaningful investigations.

In addition, there is a reluctance to change, an innate conservatism that often proves nigh unbudgeable.

That was brought home to me last week when I read the report of the internal audit on the Templemore Garda College and its many poor practices and its loose and irregular (and questionable) arrangements on the finance side.

Those serious issues and deficiencies were first identified in an audit in 2009. What happened? Nothing. They were just ignored. It wasn’t as much as somebody trying to brush something under the carpet. It was just that everybody buried themselves in the sand.

That will partly explain the tortuously long time it took to move on wrongly issued summonses and on the gross exaggeration of breath tests.

This morning Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald is bringing a memo to Cabinet, that will say that independent international experts should come in and recommend increased powers for GSOC and for the Policing Authority.

Will it be enough for the public - and more immediately for Fianna Fáíl – or will people still demand a head on a plate?

Sarah Bardon has the details of what Fitzgerald will unveil today.

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