The force's direct control by government has been calamitous to its ability to reform, writes Conor Brady
There is a depressing predictability about much of the response to last week's Prime Time programme on the Garda. The Government says reform is on the way. The opposition says it is too slow. Concerned citizens are disquieted. The gardaí are hurt and angry.
Some public representatives reach for their clichés, principally the one about a few bad apples dragging down the force's reputation. Others hurry to remind us that the gardaí are out on the streets risking life and limb for the community.
We have had these banalities too many times, in response to too many situations, when the performance of the Garda Síochána has been in question.
There is little attempt to pose questions about the structure of Irish policing, the place of the Garda in public life or its relationship with the political institutions.
At best, such poverty of thinking indicates complacency. At worst, it reflects the belief, still widespread among the political elite in this State, that the police are first and last an instrument of government, as distinct from an agency of the law, set to serve the community in the first instance.
Yes, there are problems within the Garda Síochána, some of which were highlighted by Prime Time. Many of them derive from the culture of insularity, subordination and political manipulation within which the force has been obliged to operate by successive governments.
Ireland's policing structures are significantly out of step with others in these islands, and far removed from what is internationally recognised as best practice. They have remained unchanged since 1922. Indeed, it can be argued that they have not changed since the establishment of the Irish Constabulary - later the Royal Irish Constabulary - a century earlier.
The Garda is operated on a direct line of authority, running from the Government through the Minister for Justice to the commissioner, who has "operational responsibility". The constitutional model is scarcely different from when the inspector general of the RIC reported upwards through the chief secretary to the government of the (then) United Kingdom.
Irish and British policing have many historical differences. But both derive from the notion of the policeman as a "citizen in uniform", operating under the common law and, where possible, relying on the moral support of the community rather than upon force of arms.
But an indispensable, parallel concept in this model of policing has been that of community supervision of policing. The UK has always had police authorities (formerly known as "watch committees"), as a buffer between central government and the police. The Garda Síochána has never had anything comparable to insulate it from government.
The circumstances of the force's foundation and the instability of the State explain this in the early decades. The Labour Party leader, Tom Johnston, advanced the idea of a police authority in 1923. The Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, told him that he would not have the commissioner answerable to "the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker".
But in terms of the Garda's ability to reform itself or to adapt to changing circumstances, the system of direct control by government has been calamitous.
For decades, the force was a rich source of patronage, enthusiastically pillaged by politicians of every hue. The days when a drunken minister could challenge a guard with the offer of "a drink or a transfer to Connemara" may be gone. But much of the cultural inheritance remains.
Irish politicians are unwilling to follow practice elsewhere by relinquishing control over the Garda. The argument is made that in a compact, centralised state, there is no need for a police authority. The Garda is also the national security service, and the commissioner is also the head of national security, it is argued.
There can be no role here for "the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick-maker".
But the result is a force which has seen itself - as few other institutions of the State - tucked in under the controlling wing of government and with very little exposure to other conditioning influences.
There is little cross-fertilisation into the force's corporate culture. There is one channel of recruitment and one training experience. It is an organisation with many committed, idealistic people at all levels. But it is too often introspective, self-protective and lacking in confidence, especially when dealing with central authority.
Politicians subscribe to the notion of Garda autonomy in operational matters. But a healthy police service must have more than this. It must have the freedom and capacity to change and adapt. Successive governments have been unwilling to allow the Garda an organisational persona outside of the control zone of Merrion Street-Leinster House. And they have failed to give effect to reform when it has been so plainly required, even when the gardaí themselves have asked for it.
When the activities of the "Heavy Gang" and the controversies of the Fingerprint Section at the Garda Technical Bureau were revealed by this newspaper in the 1970s, a Fianna Fáil government appointed the late Judge Barra Ó Briain to investigate. Ó Brian presented a series of recommendations, ranging from the appointment of a "custodial guardian" in each Garda station to the provision of audio tape-recording facilities for use during questioning.
Twenty years later not a single one of Ó Briain's recommendations has been implemented, despite the rotation of power, in various combinations, among all major parties in the Dáil.
When Mr Justice Lynch's report on the Kerry Babies affair was published in 1986, it highlighted incomprehensible gaps in Garda procedure in the investigation of serious crime. But it was met with a wall of silence and an absolute lack of administrative or legislative response.
After the Garda Complaints Board was established almost two decades ago, senior gardaí, among others, pointed out that it was ridiculously under-resourced and under-funded. Yet successive administrations refused to provide the funds or manpower that might have enabled it to discharge its functions with some efficiency and credibility to the benefit of police and public alike.
We have the policing standards and the policing service the politicians have ordained for us.
Merrion Street governments and Leinster House politicians want to have it both ways. They want a Garda Síochána that is compliant, safe, responsive to political authority and amenable to what might broadly be described as the "political will".
They may also want it to be efficient, transparent, working to the best internationally-recognised practices of civil policing. But they cannot have it both ways.
With the far-reaching reform of policing in Northern Ireland, there is a perception in interested criminal justice circles that the Garda Síochána is being left behind.
The Garda Síochána Bill, 2003, has been described by Michael McDowell as the most significant reform of the police since the foundation of the State. There is much that is good in it. But it would be very much better if it provided for an authority to stand between central government and the Garda Síochána similar to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland.
To a great extent, the Garda is living off the good will and trust that it built up in more tranquil times, before this was an urbanised, complex and multicultural society. That capital will run out in time.
Such a catastrophe will only be averted if the politicians create the conditions and structures in which the Garda can function fully to 21st-century standards of accountability and autonomy.
Conor Brady is author of Guardians of the Peace, a history of the Garda. He is currently Visiting Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is a former editor of The Irish Times