TWO OF the most serious investigations into Garda misconduct undertaken to date by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission are nearing completion and are due to be finalised in the coming months.
Commission chairman Dermot Gallagher said he expected an imminent conclusion to its three-year probe into whether serious drugs charges against a drug dealer were discontinued because he was a Garda informer.
He also said the recently opened investigation into an incident in which gardaí policing anti-Shell protests in Co Mayo were recorded joking about raping two women should also be concluded shortly.
“We should be able to complete it at a very early stage.” It was hoped to finalise it by the end of the summer, he added.
Speaking at the launch of the commission’s 2010 annual report in Dublin yesterday, Mr Gallagher said all five gardaí present when the remarks were made had been interviewed by the commission and all had co-operated with the inquiry.
The tape recording had been sent to the Police Service of Northern Ireland to be forensically analysed.
However, The Irish Times has learned that neither of the women arrested at the time and about whom the rape-related remarks were made has lodged a formal complaint to the commission about the matter.
While the inquiry being carried out by the commission is a public interest inquiry and does not necessitate any complaint from the public, Shell to Sea at the time of the controversy in April indicated the women would be making complaints. One of the women has been interviewed by the commission while the other woman has not engaged in any way with the investigation.
Two of the five gardaí present when the offending remarks were made have already been cleared of wrongdoing, and The Irish Timesunderstands the case against a further two is unlikely to result in any adverse findings. The outcome of the investigation into the fifth Garda member's role in the incident is not known.
Mr Gallagher said the unrelated investigation into how drugs charges were dropped against a Garda informer was now about to end.
In 2008 the State entered a nolle prosequi in the case against Kieran Boylan (37), Rockfield Park, Ardee, Co Louth. The dropped charges related to the seizure of €1.7 million of cocaine and heroin in October 2005.
Boylan, already a convicted drug dealer, was a Garda informer and the commission are trying to establish if the information he was supplying in any way influenced some senior Garda officers in discontinuing the drugs charges against him.
According to its annual report, the commission received almost 5,000 allegations of misconduct against gardaí last year, including 540 complaints in which people alleged they were assaulted by gardaí. The most common complaint was abuse of authority, which accounted for 34 per cent of all complaints.