As the prospect for peace in the Garda appears set to improve, it may be opportune to seek a mechanism to avoid or dilute a repetition of the publicly damaging dispute which led to the GRA withdrawal of labour through the "blue flue" protests.

Negotiators for the rank and file are expected, in the main, to endorse an interim pay award of 9 per cent when they meet their 27-member executive council today. They will emphasise that a further 4.75 per cent is available under the terms of the Partnership 2000 programme, while a further non-quantifiable increase has viability, under option A of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, in exchange for agreed flexibility and savings, with a retrospective element agreed.

Whether this will find favour with the GRA executive is far from clear, given its initial demand for a 39 per cent pay claim, let alone whether the 8,500 gardai will vote for its acceptance by ballot. It is disquieting to observe that divisions still remain at the top levels in the GRA, with a senior source quoted as saying, at the weekend, that acceptance cannot be presumed and that further industrial action cannot be ruled out.

It is to be hoped, for the sake of public confidence in the force, that this represents a minority view.

On the assumption that industrial harmony can be restored, it is incumbent on the Government to implement a strategy devised to ensure that future pitfalls can be avoided.

One leader writer has ventured the opinion that "throwing money at the guards every few years does not bring about the desired objective of a national police force which is efficient well respected and content with its conditions of service". Neither, it could be argued, does the policy of containment pursued by successive governments in respect of gardai and their pay claims.

It is curious that the steering group which recently analysed working conditions in the Garda, while denouncing practices such as double-jobbing, ignored suggestions from the staff associations on mechanisms for resolving trade disputes. One was the recommendation of a consultative council, proposed by Kieran Mulvey of the Labour Relations Commission, in his 1994 Re port on the Garda Dispute', when he outlined a forum comprising of management on one side, staff associations on the other, with an independent chairman to arbitrate on contentious matters - in effect a type of rights commissioner.

He accurately predicted that gardai were unlikely to stand idly by as they were leapfrogged by other public sector groupings.

Secondary employment, one could argue, is no more the cause of inefficiency in the force than in any other profession. The Garda Commissioner has the absolute right of veto in this area and should be left to exercise it unhindered as he sees fit.

Any constraints imposed on gardai must be constitutional and balanced and should not purport to decide, for example, where or in what standard of accommodation a member of the force should reside, once a breach of law, or otherwise discredit on the profession, is not disclosed.

That inefficiency exists in the force is beyond argument, but tracing its root cause is the challenge. When gardai lost the opportunity to streamline, like other public sector bodies, under the terms of the PCW five years ago, the Department of Justice appeared to place a greater pre-eminence on short-term Exchequer savings than on long-term organisational gains, which regrettably only served to give effect to Mr Mulvey's self-fulfilling prophecy that the gardai would not stand idly by.

A resolution can only be achieved by dispelling the notion that gardai are different and cannot be accorded general employee rights. They have comprehensively dispelled this myth with their "blue flue" protest.

No longer can they claim a uniqueness in the workplace. Recent Government suggestions that their inclusion within the social partnership is being actively considered are to be welcomed and cannot be credibly resisted since the GRA has enshrined congress affiliation as its policy since 1993.

The Garda Siochana stands on the threshold of a new dawn. It is the responsibility of all informed commentators to hasten its advent. Gar dai must be encouraged to play a participatory role in the larger working sphere, which would convey rights commensurately balanced with responsibilities in the national interest, which many would argue have been all but non-existent in the recent past, while restoring public confidence in a force with such a historically proud tradition.

Chris Finnegan, former general secretary of the Garda Federation, is a freelance journalist