Political control is at the root of the problems within the Garda

An Garda Síochána has a proud history, and thousands of individual officers have given their best – many their very lives – serving and protecting the community without fear or favour since the foundation of the state.

But that honourable history is also punctuated by a sequence of landmark scandals and episodes of inefficiency and outright corruption, more than adequately chronicled in voluminous official reports and in these pages over the years.

The time is therefore right for the wholesale redefinition of its structures and role in maintaining public tranquillity and enforcing the law.

The latest multi-controversies, including the treatment of whistleblowers, the wholesale falsification of traffic enforcement records and wrongful prosecutions, are the inevitable consequence of an organisation that was inadequately commanded, poorly supervised and more concerned with closing ranks to protect its reputation. Allegedly smearing those brave enough to expose irregularities and protecting the malefactors rather than exposing them is the ultimate symptom of a corrupt and cynical culture.

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Direct political control

The single factor common to all these debilitating events is, of course, that the organisation has been and remains under direct political control by the government of the day.

Whenever one of these scandals emerged beyond the secretive instincts that have characterised the official and internal Garda culture for generations, successive governments set up investigations and huffed and puffed with faux indignation until the matter dropped off the news and political agenda, and business as normal was resumed.

Thus numerous windows of opportunity for necessary root-and-branch reform were missed and the virus corroding the integrity of the organisation was permitted to flourish and further infect its command structure and the integrity of its operations, all the way up the ranks from junior to senior level.

The fact that the government of the day directly controlled not only the appointment of the most senior officers but also all promotions within the middle ranks contributed to propagating a dysfunctional Garda culture to be defended at all costs and a belief that the force was an unaccountable law unto itself.

Minor steps

The creation of an independent Gsoc, and the more recent but long overdue appointment of a Policing Authority, are but minor steps in the right direction when what is needed is a fundamental reconstruction of the foundations of the Garda to meet the needs of policing a changing nation with social and economic challenges for which it is currently ill-equipped.

Above all, it must foster policies and tactics geared to developing and maintaining a close link to the community it serves and act to rebuild the public confidence in its competency and integrity that are the hallmarks of effective policing by consent and co-operation.

The cornerstone of a new policing architecture must be the complete and irretrievable severing of the direct and indirect tentacles of political control which are at the heart of so many of the scandals that have compromised the integrity of the force and contributed to professional deficiencies over many years.

The reformed Garda should not be responsible for maintaining national security. Instead a modest national security agency should be created, reporting directly to the taoiseach and minister for justice, with oversight by an all-party committee of the Oireachtas, empowered to sit in camera if emergency circumstances required it. The defence forces could usefully participate in this sensitive work.

Clear power

The Policing Authority must be strengthened and given clear power to oversee and strategically direct the police service. Two-thirds of its members should be drawn from a range of civic and state organisations appointed by an open public recruitment process on suitability and merit alone. The remaining one-third of the posts should be filled by members of the Oireachtas appointed by the Dáil and Senate. It is critical they are a minority on the authority to prevent any direct political control over policing.

One of the key tasks of the authority must be to set an annual budget in consultation with the commissioner and Department of Justice and set out strategic and performance objectives in consultation with the commissioner alone. The outcomes would be monitored and discussed at joint meetings open to the public and media.

By law, the government and authority must not be allowed to interfere with the operational independence of the police, but it should be understood that the actions of the police, in every respect, are subject to exhaustive review after the event, particularly where there has been public controversy.

It is critical that the authority has the power to summon officers and require the production of associated written and electronic records.

Open competition

The authority must also be empowered to appoint the commissioner and the most senior officers by open competition and be given the right to fire or sanction any of them who are guilty of actions deemed to be contrary to the good of the service or community. An appeals mechanism, involving an independent judicial assessor, would also be a necessary safeguard.

The commissioner should, in future, also conduct the internal promotion of officers through the ranks. This process must be meticulously conducted by open and transparent competition involving analysis of suitability and aptitude by written examination, assessment centres and interview by a board with Policing Authority oversight.

New policing legislation should also provide for a single staff association for all the sub-commissioner ranks, with its officers being appointed by three-yearly postal elections by all ranks, with the process being conducted and independently verified by a specialist body capable of providing this service. There should be provision for a similar staff association for commissioner ranks.

Ensuring public confidence in the police and providing effective redress for misdemeanours should be the task of the Garda Ombudsman. Again the Gsoc must be able to rigorously enforce its evidence-gathering with unambiguous legal powers not only to uncover malpractice but to protect officers from malicious or vexatious complaints.

There have been calls for a Patten-style review. They are misguided. The reform agenda is all too clear. What is needed is the political commitment to implementing it.

Chris Ryder was a member of the Police Authority for NI from 1994-1996.