The impact of Michael McDowell's efforts to change Garda culture are about to hit the force, writes Conor Lally, Crime Correspondent
Given the testosterone-dominated world of the Garda Síochána, it was ironic that two women were dispatched this week to help ease the force into the biggest reform process it has ever faced.
As Kathleen O'Toole and Carmel Foley enjoyed a drink at the hotel bar in Wexford with delegates at the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (Agsi), their affable natures belied the rough road ahead.
O'Toole is the head of the Garda Inspectorate. The new agency will study resourcing and practices across the force. It will drive change through its recommendations to Government.
Foley is a member of the Garda Ombudsman Commission. It will assume the role of the Garda Complaints Board from next month in investigating all complaints against serving members, and it will have the power to arrest members if it sees fit.
O'Toole and Foley represent the two organisations that Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell believes will help transform levels of professionalism and accountability within the Garda.
McDowell used his address to the Agsi conference to remind delegates that on the issue of resourcing they'd never had it so good. He outlined his record as Minister and awarded himself the usual gold star.
"If he was chocolate he'd eat himself," was how one delegate put it.
Without delay, he pointed his ministerial chariot towards Dublin and was gone. His mind seemed to be more on the election than on pressing Garda flesh over a meal and drinks.
But O'Toole and Foley were on a different mission. Both came to Wexford the night before they were due to address delegates. They ate with the sergeants and inspectors and relaxed over a few beers. They may not have worked the room quite like country councillors, but both their visits could fairly be described as charm offensives.
Neither made a formal speech in the conference hall, opting instead to speak off the cuff. Both did their best to address delegates' queries during lengthy question-and-answer sessions. Foley made sure to weave into her speech the fact that her father had been a member of the force.
There was, their performances softly insisted, nothing to fear from them or the new agencies they represent. They were masterful. They left Wexford having filled the inspectorate's and ombudsman's coffers with plenty of Garda brownie points, which both their agencies are probably going to need.
O'Toole told delegates that the Garda Síochána had been through a difficult period recently. She was referring to the Donegal Garda corruption still being investigated by the Morris tribunal, the shooting dead of John Carthy and the ensuing Barr tribunal, and the wrongful charging of homeless drug addict Dean Lyons with a double murder he did not commit and the resultant inquiry.
A number of delegates who addressed conference this week spoke of the loss of confidence within the force following the recent controversies. Others told The Irish Times they believed the recent reporting of the role of an off-duty garda in the fatal collision that killed Dubliner Derek O'Toole was typical of what they see as a new level of mistrust of the Garda on the part of the media and the public.
"There was an edge to the coverage that I'd never seen before," said one delegate.
THIS WEEK, AGSI president Paschal Feeney told his members that morale was now at the lowest point within the force in his 35 years as a serving member.
While most sergeants and inspectors who spoke to this newspaper disagreed with Feeney's assessment, they did acknowledge the force was suffering.
Feeney blamed political interference for the loss of morale. Because of the Garda Síochána Act 2005, he said, McDowell's "footprint" could be seen in all aspects of day-to-day policing.
Under the Act, McDowell can, with the sanction of the secretary general of the Department of Justice, access any Garda file on any investigation at any time.
The Tánaiste was quick to point out that the miscarriages of justice and Garda corruption in the Donegal Division necessitated the change process currently underway.
"We had a situation in relation to the Donegal [Garda corruption] reports that my predecessor John O'Donoghue was denied access to the files there," he said.
"He was in the position that he was fending off questions in Dáil Éireann while being denied access. And I, as the attorney general, was defending civil claims without access to those files. If you want public accountability for An Garda Síochána then it is necessary that the Minister of the day is entitled to be informed of what is actually going on."
This new access on the part of a Minister for Justice to Garda files is only one element of the accountability McDowell believes is so badly needed. Under the Garda Síochána Act, all members of the force are now required to explain to more senior colleagues their actions or inactions while on duty. The Inspectorate and Ombudsman Commission are also provided for under the Act, having sprung from the loins of the Morris tribunal.
The Inspectorate has already recommended a range of improvements in equipment and training that Agsi and the Garda Representative Association have been demanding for years.
It has already dulled McDowell's self-congratulatory gold stars by pointing out the need for modern weapons and training in how to use them, the lack of firing ranges and the decrease in firearms training time, even for the force's Emergency Response Unit.
The Inspectorate has also bemoaned the lack of a modern digital radio system, the failure to, as yet, provide bullet-proof and stab-proof vests to all members of the force, and the lack of such basic communication tools as e-mail addresses for members. All of this has ensured a prolonged honeymoon period with serving members. But it is only a matter of time before the Inspectorate scrutinises Garda practices. Meanwhile, the Ombudsman Commission is unlikely to enjoy any honeymoon period.
It represents the first time a well- resourced independent team of investigators has been given police powers to get to the bottom of complaints made by members of the public against gardaí. Gone are the days when gardaí will investigate gardaí.
On the face of it, the commission should bring about a sea change in Garda accountability and a resultant raising of the bar in Garda practices.
But for the foreseeable future, the Morris tribunal is to continue pumping out news of serious Garda corruption. And the Ombudsman Commission is set to shine a light on Garda practices which have never been robustly tested. Not all of its findings will be positive.
Kathleen O'Toole this week said that, despite recent events and the reform programme now facing gardaí, there was much to be hopeful about. Detection rates were high and the performance of specialist units such as the Garda National Drugs Unit and Criminal Assets Bureau had been "exceptional".
One wonders how long it will take the force to face up to the public relations battle it has on its hands and go on a charm offensive as O'Toole and Carmel Foley did this week.
The Garda might do well to begin this fight by publicising the results of its "exceptional" units and of its frontline members around the country, most of whom are the antithesis of the minority fringe that prospered for so long in Donegal.