The gardai should be allowed to join political parties in order to prevent a repeat of the situation in the 1970s where the force was used for "party or sectional interests", a Garda conference has heard.
The reference to the existence of a Garda "heavy gang" at that time arose in a debate at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association.
The conference supported a motion calling for gardai to be able to participate in local politics.
Garda Michael Byrne, from the Garda College in Templemore, Co Tipperary, pointed out that other European countries, particularly Germany, allowed police to participate in politics. A German police officer was elected to the German parliament in 1987.
Garda Byrne said he had an interest in environmental issues but was prevented by law from participating in a political party.
"In other countries," he said, "the biggest danger facing any police force is not one posed by individual police officers engaging in politics in their spare time. Rather, it is the prospect of some future corrupt government coming to power - and which sets about using the police force for party or sectional interests and, as a result, corrupts the police force by encouraging it to participate in activities which are immoral or illegal.
"This danger is not alien to this country. We only have to look to the 1970s when there were widespread media allegations that there operated in the gardai a so-called `heavy gang'. "
"It is this danger which the German authorities, for example, had in mind when they allowed German police officers to engage in politics."
Garda Byrne, referring to the German police officer, Gunter Graf, who was elected to the Bundestag in 1987, said that if policemen could become involved in politics in Germany, with its very violent history, "surely the same is possible in Ireland, a country whose violent past pales in comparison to that of Germany's".