“Zero tolerance” is a phrase used frequently by gardaí in relation to domestic abuse. It is a formulation beloved of law enforcement, conjuring up the muscular, folksy style of Rudy Giuliani promising to clean up New York. It caught on, migrated into talk about policing and policy-making elsewhere. There it is, in all caps, on the title page of the Government’s 2022 strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. ZERO TOLERANCE.
Zero tolerance for domestic violence is a worthy goal. And in recent years, promising steps have been made towards it. But there have also been moments in the history – and not just the very distant past – of An Garda Síochána when you might be forgiven for thinking the words mean something else. Not very much tolerance. Tolerance in certain, limited circumstances. Zeroish tolerance.
In the case of the complaints raised by Margaret Loftus about her garda ex-husband, Trevor Bolger, if the gardaí’s tolerance for anything could be described as “zero”, it was the suggestion that one of their own could possibly be a perpetrator.
Many aspects of the story told by Loftus in her media interviews this week are depressingly familiar. There was the wall-punching fury unleashed by her ex-husband on a night in October, 2012, which she says left her sitting immobile on a bed all night with two tiny children in her arms, intoning silent Hail Marys. The way, when she first tried to seek justice, she was brushed off by “people in positions of power”. Her long, long wait for justice. Even by Irish standards, the 58 hearings she had to endure and six-year delay between charges being brought to a criminal trial is extraordinary. Her gratitude to the gardaí who finally took the investigation seriously.
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We’ve seen elements of all this before: Domestic violence is part of the steady drumbeat of Irish life, so ubiquitous these stories barely register. But what made Loftus’s story different is that both she and her tormentor were gardaí. He is still a member of the force. And so, what might have appeared in media reports as yet another awful, unremarkable story became something else. It became a pressure test for how zero tolerance holds up when the accused is one of their own. Poorly, is the short answer.
What happened is that the wagons were circled around Bolger, while Loftus’s complaint gathered dust on a shelf.
In the years after she made her complaint, but before he was suspended, Bolger was promoted to a position where he had access to firearms. She requested a transfer to Mayo, was approved and then denied it, and then transferred to Sligo instead.
By 2018, Loftus was so frustrated she compiled a case file herself. She wrote her own witness statement and sent it to the Garda Commissioner’s office. Assistant commissioner Pat Leahy picked up on it and things started moving the very next day.
When a story appeared in The Irish Times five years ago that an unnamed serving garda had been charged with domestic violence, the gardaí suddenly sprang into action. Inquiries were launched to find out how it got out – despite the fact no element of the report was confidential.
There has been a lot of discussion about cultural attitudes to domestic violence within An Garda Síochána. Five years ago, there was a very understandable outcry when an inquiry established that thousands of domestic violence calls had gone unanswered, and others were met with a lack of empathy. A survey in 2025 by Women’s Aid found that 44 per cent of women were not satisfied with their initial engagement with gardaí over domestic abuse. This is a marginal improvement on the findings of a 2024 garda inspectorate report that 50 per cent of complainants were dissatisfied.
Bolger pleaded guilty to a single charge at the lower end of the scale, meaning he would not be tried on more serious charges. He got a three-month fully suspended sentence. Garda headquarters is to conduct an internal process to determine his future. Loftus has said that if he doesn’t lose his job, she will chain herself to the railings of Leinster House.
If a garda – someone who knows how to navigate the system and understands what is needed for a successful prosecution – has to fight so hard for some form of justice, what hope is there for anyone else?
Something needs to change. We should start by examining what we mean by “zero tolerance”. As things stands, it’s little better than Orwellian Newspeak.
