The Irish Police - a Legal and Constitutional Perspective by Dermot P.J. Walsh, Round Hall, Sweet & Maxwell, 443pp, £85
A few short years ago there was little or nothing on Irish policing in most libraries in this country. If one or two slim volumes could be located on the shelves of the larger institutions, they would have taken up just a few centimetres of shelf-space. But the hiatus is being gradually filled and Professor Dermot Walsh's ample volume is a unique and a major contribution to a growing body of printed knowledge. It comes hard on the heels of Dr Liam McNiffe's detailed history of the Garda Siochana and Dr John Brewer's two well-sourced treatments of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its predecessor force throughout all of Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Members of the police forces on the island have also begun to commit their memoirs to paper. Sir John Hermon, former Chief Constable of the RUC, became the first chief officer of that force to do so. Regrettably, he has not yet had a counterpart in this regard among the Commissioners of the Garda Siochana. Individual gardai have broken new ground, notably retired Superintendent Tim Leahy, who published his Memoirs of a Garda Superintendent a year ago.
But Professor Walsh's book, entitled The Irish Police, is neither a history nor a memoir. It is a legal and constitutional perspective on the Garda Siochana. In that it refers only en passant to the other police force in Ireland - the RUC - some might consider the title a misnomer. One assumes it is intended to convey the substance of the book to an international readership for whom the word Garda is more likely to mean a scenic lake in northern Italy.
But whatever semantic quibbles one may have with its nomenclature, this is an extraordinarily detailed and informative treatment of the law and regulations which have shaped the police service of this State. Professor Walsh begins with the legal status and structures of the Garda Siochana and travels through its control and functions as defined by law, the discipline and management of the force, its accountability to the individual citizen and to the Oireachtas before finally arriving at its new extra-national functions - Europol, cross-border co-operation, international networking and police service abroad through the agency of the United Nations. References are assiduous and copious and the reader is never left without signposts to the statutory or instrumental origin of any particular practice or regulation.
It is only when the author presents page after page of cases stated, of constitutional provisions, of statutes, of instruments and orders, of European and international legislation, that one realises the complexity of the universe in which the Garda Siochana must operate. The enabling acts which brought the force into existence may only date back to the foundation of the State. But the legal basis derives from ancient custom and practice, from statutes often many centuries old, with a myriad of checks and balances built in over time. The Garda Siochana's world stretches from Magna Carta to the Criminal Assets legislation introduced after the murder of Veronica Guerin.
Much of this complexity derives from the unique standing at law of the individual Garda. The Garda Siochana may appear a monolith, operating Leviathan-like under centralised direction. But while it has to do its operational work this way, each individual member remains a "ministerial officer", discharging duties which are vested in him or her personally and for which he or she is personally accountable. A garda making an arrest cannot do so merely on the instruction of a superior. Nor can a garda repudiate the consequences of any action merely on the grounds that it was undertaken at the behest of a superior. It is the great paradox of the common law tradition of policing that the "constable" is at once obliged to work within a disciplined and hierarchical structure while at the same time exercising - or not exercising - very considerable powers on the basis of individual judgment.
Professor Walsh explores these and many other complexities of the Garda Siochana's work and responsibilities. There is also an especially valuable exploration of the relationship which has grown up between the Garda Siochana and the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas's scrutiny of the Garda Siochana over the decades has been singularly ineffective and ill-informed and Professor Walsh, with considerable acumen, explores some of the reasons for this. The line of accountability for operational matters as between the Commissioner and the Minister for Justice is blurred and unclear. There has been a political reluctance in the Oireachtas to criticise the force's operational performance other than by visiting such criticism personally upon the Minister. But the law gives the Commissioner operational independence. A sort of accountability "black hole" has thus developed, helping, in the author's words, to frustrate effective police accountability.
This book fills a need for academics, parliamentarians, lawyers, civil servants, civil liberties activists and for members of the Garda Siochana itself. It is a telling commentary on the lack of attention paid to the criminal justice system throughout our third-level institutions that no comparable predecessor volume has existed. There has been much heat and little light in the public commentary on the Garda Siochana and it is time for this to change. Professor Walsh summarises: "The public as a whole must . . . be able to satisfy itself that it is getting value for money from the police force and that the substantial legal and moral authority entrusted to the force is not being abused." Anyone interested in these questions of public policy will find his book indispensable.