The new Gardá Commissioner faces a hard battle to restore public confidence, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
However brave a face he puts on it as he retires this weekend, Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne leaves behind him a force whose credibility has been severely damaged by a series of allegations and inquiries over the past few years.
The highest-profile examinations of Garda conduct are the Morris and Barr inquiries, which are examining allegations, respectively, of Garda corruption in Co Donegal and of how the Emergency Response Unit came to shoot dead John Carthy, a man suffering from depression, in Abbeylara.
The Morris tribunal followed an internal Garda inquiry into allegations about certain members of the force in Co Donegal, and a feature of this tribunal has been repeated complaints from counsel for the tribunal that members of the force refused to disclose full information to this inquiry.
But this is not all. Last year, the Garda Complaints Board attempted to inquire into how a number of demonstrators came to be injured during a Reclaim the Streets march on May 1st. The frustrated chairman of the board, Gordon Holmes, commented that none of the 150 gardaí involved was willing to identify colleagues responsible for the assaults on demonstrators recorded by television cameras.
Other allegations of Garda misconduct have never made it as far as an inquiry. The staggering sum of €6 million has been paid out, mainly in out-of-court settlements, to some 70 victims of Garda assault and wrongful arrest over the past five years. The fact that all but six of these never made it to court means that the public does not know the nature of the allegations. More seriously, there is no way of knowing whether they were part of any pattern and, if so, what measures have been taken to ensure they are not repeated. Nor is it known what disciplinary action, if any, was taken against those responsible for these actions and the consequent drain on public funds.
Elsewhere in the criminal justice system members of the Garda have been found guilty of fabricating evidence against suspects. This was a finding of the Special Criminal Court during the trial of Colm Murphy for involvement in the Omagh bombing, when two Garda witnesses were described by Mr Justice Barr as having "persistently lied on oath."
Similar remarks were made by the same judge about two other members of the force who had obtained a confession from Paul Ward of involvement in the murder of Veronica Guerin. That confession was found inadmissible by the court, and Ward's conviction was later overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal on other grounds.
Such dubious methods are not confined to suspects associated with criminal gangs or subversive organisations. It has never been explained how a homeless drug addict, Dean Lyons, came to confess to the murder of two psychiatric patients in Grangegorman in 1997. Another man, Mark Nash, who has since been convicted of the murder of a young couple in Co Roscommon, later confessed to these murders in a statement which included details never publicly revealed. He has never been charged.
A case against another man on the margins of society, Fred Flannery, who was charged with the murder of Denis O'Driscoll in Cork in 1994, in a case involving a house frequented by the homeless, collapsed when it was found that relevant evidence had been withheld, not only from the defence but from the prosecution.
The list could go on. The cumulative effect of this is that the courts have become increasingly reluctant to accept Garda evidence, while the public has developed a growing cynicism about the force, suspecting that the practices emerging in relation to Co Donegal are widespread.
Of course, much excellent work is carried out by members of the Garda Síochána, and there are tens of thousands of successful prosecutions, untainted by any suggestion of impropriety. The victims of sexual abuse, for instance, testify to the sensitivity and professionalism of the gardaí working in this area.
But the "few rotten apples" response to the explosion of allegations no longer suffices. The time has come for a root-and-branch reappraisal of the Garda Síochána - its structures, methods of working, and relationship with wider society - such as has never taken place in its 80-year history.
Prof Dermot Walsh of the University of Limerick, whose book, The Irish Police, remains the seminal study of the force, is one of those who argues for such a fundamental review.
"For decades we have explained away incidents of police malpractice by the cosy notion that it was a few rotten apples," he says. "That is understandable. We all know excellent gardaí. We all know excellent work carried out by gardaí, and we don't want to sully the reputations of good gardaí. Then, in the context of Northern Ireland, when the activities of the Heavy Gang came to light, we did not want to undermine the battle against subversion. We effectively turned a blind eye."
This is a view shared by leading criminal lawyer, solicitor Garret Sheehan. He told a meeting of the UCD Law Society last year that in the 1970s the Garda Síochána were given to understand that society wanted certain results, and did not care what methods were used to obtain them. The appointment of an Ombudsman would not solve the crisis of confidence unless society addressed the question of what kind of police force it wanted, and what standards it expected from it, he said.
"In retrospect, our attitude was a mistake," saysWalsh. "The gardaí were allowed to think they were bigger than the law itself. Their self-perception was that they were the law, and as long as their activities were aimed at subversives and organised crime they would not be brought to account."
The ending of the Northern troubles has been accompanied by increased public scrutiny of the Garda, but Walsh fears they are in denial about the extent of the problem. Radical solutions are necessary. He sees two essential elements in this: real accountability to the public, and a fundamental reappraisal of Garda education and training.
For a start, there should be an end to the segregation of young trainees in Templemore, where they live and are trained together, thereby forging a collective culture in isolation from other young people. Instead, according to Walsh, they should receive classroom education in universities with other young people, "mixing and debating with them and learning that they are not cynical criminals". Conversely, people educated with them would see members of the force as ordinary people, not as an insulated arm of the State.
"That is more in line with international practice," says Walsh, who points to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which is part of New York City University. Students receive a degree in criminal justice, and can enter a variety of careers, including the police. An indication of the seriousness of its education programme lies in the fact that it has 10,000 students at PhD level. In Australia also, police recruits are educated in universities.
Walsh also believes there should be multi-level entry to the force. The fact that the only entry to the force is at trainee level in Templemore is a huge disincentive to people with much-needed expertise in areas like fraud and forensic analysis.
"What's wrong with recruiting people with accountancy expertise, or degrees in law?" he asks.
There should also be structured mechanisms for the Garda to be made accountable to the public at local as well as national level. At national level an inspectorate is necessary, which would examine whether the standards of best practice were being met. This should be separate from complaints machinery, Walsh says. There should also be accountability mechanisms at local level.
"The PSNI now has a structured relationship with local communities, and that exists throughout the UK," he says. "It has never existed here."
This means that there is no effective external scrutiny on the enormous power that can be wielded by individual members of the force.
"Individual members, irrespective of rank, have the powers of the organisation as a whole and unparalleled discretion in how they use these powers," he says. "So you need to look at a much more transparent and intrusive system of accountability that reaches down to the individual actions of individual guards."
The kind of problems this could tackle are those revealed in the transcript of an interrogation that emerged during the successful defamation case taken recently against members of the force by solicitor Grainne Malone, which showed gardaí threatening a suspect with sexual abuse in prison, in a manner that had racist overtones.
Walsh is concerned that this revealed standard interrogation practices of certain suspects. He points to the fact that the National Crime Council's recent report on public order offences found different policing styles in relation to young people in working-class suburbs, as against less marginalised people in city centre locations.
"The report found the gardaí adopted an aggressive and provocative attitude to these youths, though no actual public disorder was taking place, compared with a more flexible attitude to the 'nicer' elements in society," Walsh says.
The Garda has now been in existence for 80 years. It is unique among major Irish institutions in that it has never been the subject of a fundamental review, such as is taking place at present in relation to the courts system, for example.
"The context in which the Garda Síochana is working has changed so fundamentally since it was set up that we need to look at optimum structures and how they relate to the public," says Walsh. "The police system is at the core of our criminal justice system. If you don't get that right, you don't have a criminal justice system."