The Government has endorsed the appointment of three new assistant Garda commissioners. The announcement comes after a dispute between Government and Garda management earlier this year over the internal procedures for making senior appointments. The three appointees are chief superintendents Ignatius Rice, Adrian Culligan and Dermot Jennings.
Chief Supt Culligan was the author of the Garda report on the controversial killing of John Carthy at Abbeylara, Co Longford, in May last year. His report exonerated the armed Emergency Response Unit and other garda∅ involved of any blame.
Chief Supt Culligan is based in Cork and is a brother of the former Garda Commissioner, Mr Patrick Culligan. It is expected he will serve as Regional Commander South and will continue to be based in Cork.
Chief Supt Rice was posted to Donegal last year after the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, removed three senior officers from duty there as a result of allegations about policing in the division.
He had previously served most of his career with the Special Detective Unit and was one of the leading figures in the Garda operation in Athy, Co Kildare in January 1990 in which nine people were injured by fire from police officers. He was also responsible for establishing the Garda Aerial Support Unit.
Chief Supt Jennings is in also an officer with a Special Branch background. He works in the crime and security section at Garda Headquarters and is responsible for collating intelligence on terrorist and suspected subversive groups. He also liaises with Government through the crime section of the Department of Justice.
These two officers will fill vacancies as commanders in the East Region based in Mullingar, or the West Region based in Galway.
The appointments to the three positions followed delays over the implementation of new selection procedures which are understood to have been sought at the behest of the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue.
In April this year, officials for the Minister sent a memo to Garda management, saying the new selection system should be "competence-based".
A memo from the Department said appointment to the rank of assistant commissioner should be without any favouritism and regarded as apolitical. It said the old system was "insufficiently transparent".
The document sent to Garda management also says: "The Government has specifically asked that the system of selecting candidates for promotion to assistant commissioner be reviewed. The question has been raised a number of times at Government, and this paper looks at the options for a new system to be approved by Government."
Until this year, appointments to this rank were selected by a three-person panel consisting of the commissioner, a deputy commissioner and a third person, usually a senior figure in business or the Civil Service.
The interview board which selected the new assistant commissioners consists of the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, a business consultant appointed by the Top-Level Appointments Commission and a retired senior civil servant nominated by the Civil Service Appointments Commission.
The fact that two of the new assistant commissioners have backgrounds in the Special Branch is in keeping with recent trends in appointments to top posts.