A vital victory for McDowell on Garda reserve issue

Inside Politics: In a quiet political week, at the end of the party conference season, Michael McDowell returned to the headlines by taking on the Garda Representative Association and forcing it into an embarrassing retreat over its threat to interfere in the political process.

The Minister routed the GRA, to the delight of almost every politician in Leinster House, and the penny should have dropped by now that he will have cross-party support for his next bout with the GRA over the Garda reserve.

The episode showed McDowell at his best: courageous, coherent and determined not to allow any interest group to undermine democratic political norms. It is ironic that the Minister has been forced to stand up for basic democratic standards against republican criminality on the one hand and representatives of the gardaí on the other.

Mr McDowell's comprehensive victory came about because he had the nerve to go to the GRA conference venue, despite being snubbed by the organisation. The traditional invitation to the Minister for Justice to address the conference was withheld and he was simply invited to the annual dinner. Instead of taking umbrage, the Minister went to Galway to confront his critics and he was on the ground to tackle them head on when they crossed the line by threatening to get involved in party politics.

The GRA had been riding for a fall ever since the "blue flu" episode of 1998, and there is little sympathy for it in the political world. Given the huge blow to the standing of the gardaí that has arisen from the revelations at the Morris tribunal, the intelligent members of the force know that in order to restore its credibility with the public they should embrace change and reform rather than oppose it.

The Minister's planned Garda reserve is only a small part of the solution but it received the backing of all the parties in Leinster House, except for Sinn Féin. All of them need to make it clear to the GRA that, if it insists on pushing the issue to a fight with the Oireachtas, there can be only one winner in the long term.

When the legislation on the Garda reserve was going through the Dáil in June of last year, Mr McDowell made a mistake by suggesting he was open to a moratorium of 12 months on its introduction while consultations could take place. Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Jim O'Keeffe, encouraged him to forget about the 12-month delay and go ahead with its introduction straight away. The Minister ultimately took this course.

During the week some politicians tried to portray this as a mistake on Mr O'Keeffe's part, whereas in fact he was absolutely right. The Opposition actually gains in credibility when it is seen to support a Minister on an issue where it is clear to everybody that a vested interest is intent on frustrating the common good.

The GRA's attitude is probably not surprising, given the way successive governments have caved in to its exercise of power. The disgraceful blue flu episode lulled the association into the belief that it could get away with flouting the laws of the land it has taken a pledge to enforce. However, the same episode helped to further erode public confidence in the force and to harden the hearts of politicians.

The main reason given by the GRA for its rejection of the reserve appears to be the notion that the full-time force is still short-staffed. With the number of gardaí due to rise to 14,000 shortly this is clearly not the case. Ireland has one of the highest ratios of police officers to population in the world. We may need more police on the beat but we do not need a bigger force; what is required is a more efficient one.

The GRA doesn't have a leg to stand on in its opposition to a Garda reserve and the sooner its members get the message that there is no political support for them the sooner they will see sense. By backing Mr McDowell, the Opposition parties stand to gain credibility for themselves in the longer term because they will be seen as a plausible alternative government.

The same applies to the health service. Fine Gael was highly critical of Mary Harney's policies at its ardfheis last week but the party's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, has rightly pledged to support the Tánaiste in her efforts to confront the power of hospital consultants. There is a clear issue of public interest at the heart of the row over her desire to introduce a new contract for public hospital consultants, given the appalling value for money provided by the existing common contract.

By backing the Tánaiste against the consultants, Fine Gael can prove that it is capable of being a party of government and will also generate credibility for the rest of its health programme. So far Ms Harney has shied away from an ultimate confrontation with the consultants, but that is something outside the control of the Opposition.

Being selective about the issues on which to fight the Government and backing it when it is clearly in the right would improve the standing of all politicians. Sterile opposition for opposition's sake has contributed to the growing lack of interest in politics. Opposition politicians face the natural temptation of siding with every interest group that wants to attack the Government but that very attitude is what threatens to keep them in opposition. If the members of the Oireachtas stand together against the GRA, and any other group that threatens to disobey the law in pursuit of sectional interest, they will all ultimately benefit from that exercise of authority.