Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan hanging on by a thread

It can be said with certainty that this time round there will no emissary travelling from Government Buildings in Merrion Street to the home of the Garda Commissioner giving timely advice on career options.

What can’t be guaranteed is that the fate of Nóirín O’Sullivan will not end up exactly the same as that of her predecessor Martin Callinan.

As things stand, irrespective of how strongly she defends her position, she is hanging on by a thread. Fine Gael remains the only party to express confidence in her. Over the weekend Fianna Fáil and the Greens signalled they could no longer support her, while Fianna Fáil laid down specific and testing conditions for the retention of its support.

If she were to step down it would mean two Garda Commissioners in succession being forced to resign, which would present acute political embarrassment for Fine Gael.

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O’Sullivan has spent the bulk of her time at the helm dealing with a succession of crises and scandals which have conspired to erode her authority and her standing. However, the latest is not just another blow. The failures – and what also seems like widespread deliberate manipulation – go to the core of the organisation. Thousands of wrongful prosecutions. Over-exaggeration of almost mind-boggling proportions in alcohol-testing – a million phantom breath tests. It led the Greens’ Eamon Ryan to describe the practice as “false policing”, a description with which it would be hard to quibble.

Vacuum of knowledge

Some of the problems have been known about since 2014, but there is a vacuum of knowledge about what O’Sullivan and her senior colleagues have done – or haven’t done – to come to grips with it. This time she does not have the excuse of not being in office – the dateline for the bulk of these difficulties are from her time in charge.

What has compounded the difficulties is no explanation as to how such serious errors and bad practices occurred, and were allowed to recur over a long period of time.

There are no details about what the Garda Síochána has done to address the problem, and to identify the individuals in the force who should be responsible and unaccountable for the mess.

In addition, some claimed the organisation had deliberately used a very busy news day to disclose the information.

On Saturday, O’Sullivan finally broke her silence. Perhaps prompted by comments by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Rome, she accepted the practice was “unacceptable” and could not be ascribed to systems failure, rather to individual and collective behaviour. She also warned of more bad practices being uncovered as the process of reform continued.

Defensive

The lack of explanation as to how this came about – and what is being done about it – riled Fianna Fáil. In direct language, leader Micheál Martin and justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan said it was not good enough. They viewed it as defensive, shallow and self-serving, and said it had failed to address the core problems.

Specifically, Martin said O’Sullivan needed to issue a second statement giving full clarity on how the situation arose before Fianna Fáil could be in a position to state confidence in her.

There are also potentially tricky questions for the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael has maintained a line that it has full confidence in O’Sullivan, as it is she who has come up with, and is implementing, the changes required. That said, the question of accountability remains.

Sinn Féin will publish a motion of no confidence in O’Sullivan on Monday.

If it reaches at Dáil vote, Fine Gael’s survival in Government is contingent on Fianna Fáil support. Fianna Fáil’s concerns, which are real, will have to be very fully assuaged if O’Sullivan is going to survive.