EVERYBODY these days has their, own gardai-are-useless story. They fall into two main types. There is, first of all, the story based on a domestic break-in.
The Garda is called to examine the broken window or the forced door, note down the items stolen, and dust surfaces for fingerprints. Invariably, the householder telling the story suggests that the taking of the fingerprints was "just for show".
"The guards said they knew who was responsible, all right, but they held out no hope of catching them," the householder says wearily. The alternative involves a stolen car or an item stolen from a car.
The storyteller recounts, with mounting outrage, how details were slowly handwritten into a big ledger by a uniformed garda with less than no interest in the issue, who shrugs when asked about the chances of recovering the item. The member of the public shrugs too. He/she went to the Garda station only to satisfy the requirements of their insurance policy. There was never much confidence that the crime would be solved.
Everybody has that sort of story to tell. Few tell a different story of a successful, Garda detection. From the Garda's point of view this perception, which is often unjust, must be deeply frustrating: only a small percentage of the force might have a bad attitude but everyone gets tarred with the same brush.
But there are reasons for some disquiet. The Garda may be a public service, but the public appears increasingly to believe that the force is not providing an adequate service.
The reality - like it or not - is that the Garda now suffers from a serious image problem.
The two are not unrelated. When the public is cynical about the Garda, morale inevitably drops within the force. William James once said that the hunger to be appreciated was a fundamental human need. The knowledge that you belong to a group which is markedly less respected, appreciated and valued than it was in all earlier generations must serve to demotivate.
The drop in morale is also related to the debilitating internal feud between the Garda associations. The public was aghast at the sight of pickets - and fisticuffs at a Garda conference. The hiring of a private security firm to protect gardai led to the public asking who was policing the police.
It would be a pity if the recent controversy about zero tolerance between Fianna Fail and the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, distracted either from the major problems currently afflicting the Garda or from the potential of the Commissioner to solve at least some of them.
It was, indeed, surprising to see the Commissioner embroiled in an essentially party political issue. But this should not obscure the fact that Mr Byrne is a breath of fresh air, a vigorous and visionary individual who clearly wants to haul the Garda back to old levels of public respect, through new levels of customer service.
Nor is the new Commissioner afraid of public examination of the force. He took the courageous step of putting himself and his force under the microscope on Liveline. That certainly would not have happened in the past.
The inherent structural problems afflicting the Garda also persist. The 1970 -Conroy Report found, for example, ... evidence of an unclear definition of roles as between the Department of Justice and the Garda Siochana. Specifically, there was a vagueness, causing uncertainty and ineffectiveness, about the relations between the Department and the Commissioner.
It went further, commenting on the lack of delegation from the Department to the force, stating, unequivocally, that "... this lack of delegation permeated the force."
NOT only does this lack of delegation permeate the force; at times it humiliates the force. The classic example of such humiliation is when the go-ahead is given for something as mundane as the purchase of new cars for the Garda fleet. Civil servants from the Department of Justice sit down with senior Garda management to decide which cars to buy. This is bureaucracy gone mad.
Why should a civil servant have any involvement in that process other than to procure the money for it? What insight could a Department of Justice official have into the special needs of gardai for transport?
In tackling the problems of gardai at the moment, clearer lines of demarcation need to be drawn between the force and the Department, just as clearer lines are being drawn between the Department and the prison service.
But there is also a need for an internal revolution. A great deal needs to be done to change attitudes and communication within the force.
Brusque or uncaring manners on the part of a garda dealing with a member of the public, whether on the phone or face to face, are unacceptable. (I'm not sure it wills work to instruct gardai to answer the telephone in Garda stations with the response "X Garda station, Y speaking, how may I help you?")
The task is broader, deeper and more demanding than that. Nothing short of a radically new corporate culture within the Garda will pull morale up by its bootstraps and boost the public perception of the force.
That new corporate culture would also require new structures which would give the force the space to breathe, pulling it somewhat clear of the department of Justice. It would also require a new sense of service to the public, matched by an emphasis on community relations and community consultation. Building a good corporate image is too often assumed to be a matter of media relations, rather than customer care.
That approach has not worked up to this point. Those behind the planned march for special pay arrangements seem to have missed a crucial reality: the Garda, currently, doesn't have anything like the support from the public that nurses have. Not only is the march unlikely to achieve its end, it stands a very good chance of being counter-productive. The public wants the Garda on the street, fighting crime - not marching for their own interests.