Labour Party meeting: An independent Garda authority must be given a 10-year agenda to reform the culture of An Garda Síochána, the former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Denis Bradley, has said.
Warning that the Garda Act, now passed into law, does not go far enough, Mr Bradley said the public debate about Garda reform created by the Morris tribunal reports will "not go away, or disappear without some consequences".
A new authority should have the power to appoint all senior officers, and oversee the Garda's operations and "put distance" between An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice.
Rejecting the previously expressed objections by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, Mr Bradley said it is "perfectly possible" for Ireland to develop its own model to ensure that a Garda authority's membership is representative and professional.
The legislation brought in by Mr McDowell had good points, he told the Labour Party's two-day gathering of TDs, Senators and election candidates in the Silver Springs hotel in Cork.
"The legislation is good, as far as it goes. Some of it is very good, but to pit legislation against culture can be a very unequal battle, when it is up against culture, habits, and traditional ways of doing things," he said.
He said a priest had warned him in the 1970s that the Garda "had become corrupt", that gardaí had become busy with "their entrepreneurial interests, and that they were more likely to build houses than look after young people.
"My mouth fell open. I argued with him and I said it wasn't true. I did not believe it, and I did not believe it for many years, but I have come to believe it," he told the meeting.
In common with other police forces, the Garda is "enormously male" in its attitudes, hierarchical and overly centralised, leaving front-line commanders with too little freedom and resources to do their jobs.
Some in the world of politics had believed that the Garda Act's passage into law meant that the Garda reform issue "was taken care of, and that it no longer needed to preoccupy their time and energies".
From its foundations in the 1920s, An Garda Síochána had given "an extraordinary legacy" to the State, but the high levels of public support it traditionally enjoys cannot be taken for granted. Though support remains high among most sections of the population, he said he had noticed "a disease" developing in recent years that will grow larger unless it is checked.
"If public support is lost over the next five, or 10 years it will be the greatest political crime that this country will ever have committed," he told the Labour Party's two-day gathering in Cork.
The Department of Justice had believed, he said, that minor reforms, such as the creation of a Garda Inspectorate, would meet demands for change:
"I laughed at them when they told me that."
Police forces internationally, including the Garda, opted for years to move officers away from community duties and into fast-response teams, and intelligence-led policing where they try to build up profiles about areas.
"Intelligence-led policing is a management style. It isn't bad, except it doesn't work in working-class areas even if you do have police living and working in them, which we don't," he said.
Calling for "knowledge-led policing", Mr Bradley said gardaí had to become parts of the community that they are policing: "They have to work there, live there, drink pints there, bet on horses there, go to church there."