Policing:The Government's decision to appoint three people to the Garda Ombudsman Commission, rather than just one as in Northern Ireland, has been supported by a leading official of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland.
Sam Pollock, chief executive of the Police Ombudsman's office, said the North agency had needed the "significant" and "clear cut" leadership offered by Nuala O'Loan.
"Don't under-estimate the pressures that have been put on Mrs O'Loan. I don't think that it has been reasonable. A much weaker person would have cracked. I think there is strength in having three. I have looked at your arrangement and think it is about right," delegates were told by Mr Pollock, who has served as Mrs O'Loan's deputy since the office was set up six years ago.
The Garda Ombudsman Commission, headed by chairman Mr Justice Kevin Haugh, former editor of The Irish TimesConor Brady and former director of consumer affairs Carmel Foley, will be operational later this year.
Mr Brady told Labour delegates he believed the commission would have been investigating the Garda's failure to respond to Austrian police warnings about paedophiles if it were operational by now.
"I think I can safely say that we would regard that as a matter in the public interest and we would want to know what happened," Mr Brady told Dublin North East delegate, Mick Sweeney.
Questioned about the Garda's failure to search Judge Brian Curtin's home before a warrant expired, he said:
"If it appears that there is an issue in the public interest then we would investigate it. There are stones that need to be turned over to see what is underneath them."
Mr Pollock said investigations by Mrs O'Loan's office into PSNI use of plastic bullets and handcuffs had changed police practice and had been as valuable as anything else done by the office since its foundation.
Pointing out that the Police Ombudsman had been challenged 26 times so far in the courts, he warned that the Garda Ombudsman Commission could expect to meet the same reaction.
Currently, the Northern office, which has 120 staff and a £7.5 million budget, receives 3,000 complaints annually, though a significant percentage of these deal with rudeness or inefficiency on the part of police officers rather than criminal wrongdoing.
So far, Mrs O'Loan has recommended that 40 PSNI officers should be prosecuted for misconduct. Twenty cases have come to court and 10 have been convicted.
"It is very difficult to convict a police officer," Mr Pollock told delegates. "They know every trick in the book. If they are covering something, they can beat us hands down."
Mr Brady said the Republic had "been unwilling or unable to catch the tide" of police reform that swept the US, the UK and Continental Europe over the last 20 years. The Garda was created as a police force, not a police service.
"We have changed the rules of the game for gardaí. We have asked them to move to a new set of ground rules."
The Morris tribunal and the Barr inquiry, he said, did not contain lessons against the Garda that "we could not have learnt 20 years ago" from earlier inquiries, particularly one in 1969 which proposed greater distance between the Garda and the Department of Justice.
"The stresses on the Garda Síochána system are gigantic. They are being asked to jump through hoops that they did not even know existed," said Mr Brady.
The Morris inquiry had shown that "the great bulk" of gardaí in Donegal had not sided with "the good people. They did not allow themselves to be distanced from the bad people. It is the people in the middle that you have to win round," Mr Brady told Dublin North Central delegate, John Fullerton.
The Garda Ombudsman will have more than 100 staff when it is fully operational, including 40 investigators drawn from retired members of foreign police forces, the Defence Forces and the Revenue. A small number of Garda superintendents are expected to be seconded to the commission.
It will be able in most cases to order its own investigations and will not have to wait to be called upon by the Government or the Garda Commissioners, though national security issues will remain out of bounds barring exceptional cases.
Former Lord Mayor of Dublin councillor Michael Conaghan said gardaí had been seen recently on the beat in Ballyfermot. "Some people were so shocked they wondered if they were lost. But will they be there in a year? No, they won't. Will they be there in six months? No."
Former minister for finance Ruairí Quinn said many members of the public are concerned about gardaí who "are double-jobbing, running flats, and other businesses".
Acknowledging public concern about Garda "moonlighting", Mr Brady said it was "very difficult to deprive anyone of their right to be industrious" if they had properly worked the hours for which they were paid.
