If they are ever to emerge from the long shadow cast by the findings of Mr Justice Morris, An Garda Síochána must start by acknowledging that each and every individual member must shoulder part of the burden of reform, writes Michael Finucane
In April of this year, Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, gave the customary Minister's speech to the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors.
During his address, the Minster stated, "Respect for An Garda Síochána is in my blood. In the dark days after the Morris tribunal I have always said the vast majority of gardaí are people that I respect and whose feelings of betrayal I share."
The "dark days" are now truly upon us, following the release of the three reports from the Morris tribunal. But if the Minister feels that he and his Garda friends are entitled to feel betrayed by the tribunal in its findings, then they have learned nothing from the conclusions of Mr Justice Morris, a former president of the High Court and judge of the Special Criminal Court. Mr Justice Morris is no-one's idea of a radical and is for this reason that the findings he delivers are so lethal: "The tribunal has been staggered by the amount of indiscipline and insubordination it has found in the Garda force" was the coup-de-grâce assessment.
It is clear that An Garda Síochána has become a police force where success is measured by how well one can scheme, manipulate the system to your own ends, get away with, if not murder, certainly not investigating one when it is supposed to have happened, and successfully blame others for the failures and wrongdoing when there is any chance of being caught.
This is the force we now have in Ireland. It is why there must be fundamental reform starting from the top down, the bottom up and every other conceivable manner until the cancer exposed by Morris has been eradicated permanently. Otherwise, the Garda will lose that last element that is the difference between order and anarchy: the consent of the public to obey the uniform. Ultimately, that is what it is all about. A democratic society is not controlled by the police; it consents to be policed because of a generally accepted need for control. If that is lost, then the situation becomes unworkable, as became the case in South Africa before the ending of apartheid and in Northern Ireland pre-Good Friday agreement and Patten report.
The days of the police force of the former South Africa were clearly numbered when it got to the stage of the police being the best source of stolen spare parts and car stereos in the country. A bribe was the only way to get your driving licence, the usual one being a few cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of good whisky. These were the least of their sins, of course, which stretched all the way up to serious physical abuse and murder. In similar vein, the Royal Ulster Constabulary was certainly on the way out when it dropped to the point of being acceptable to only 50 per cent of the community in the North.
The reasons included serial abuse of persons in custody and collusion with loyalist paramilitaries in the murder of Catholics, nationalists and republicans.
It simply was not an option to call the police in South Africa or Northern Ireland if you were black or nationalist and when that means that the consent of a significant proportion of the community is not forthcoming, there can't be effective policing. It is at this point that we must turn to the problem of An Garda Síochána and try to understand what it is that has led us to the state we are in.
Impunity has not yet been turned into an illegal automotive trade, as per South Africa, and there are no loyalists to collude with. Measures have been taken to videotape the events that take place behind the closed doors of an interview room, ensuring that abuses cannot go unnoticed. So why is there now a situation comparable to the worst examples of law enforcement chaos seen internationally in the last 30 years? The reason is startlingly simple: there was no will to say "Stop." When the law was broken or abuses committed, it is not that they were unknown or invisible, it was that no-one did anything about it; much of the time, wrongdoing was actively covered up - the same phenomenon as occurred in cases of clerical sex abuse. Irish society - its citizens, politicians, judges, civil servants and the gardaí themselves - were all content to accept the way in which they were policed.
There was consent to indiscipline and insubordination. Irish society went along with it.
The reason we are in the state we are in is because the problem was not acknowledged and because it was not acknowledged, it could not be addressed. Our real challenge as a society, therefore, is in acknowledging the existence of a problem and being determined to do something about it and to persist until it is solved.
In the course of examining the Richie Barron murder investigation, the Morris tribunal found that the garda supposed to be on duty in Raphoe at the time was drinking in a pub in Lifford with an off-duty colleague.
Nowhere is it found that this garda encountered resistance from the pub owners about drinking on duty, nor is it mentioned that his colleague advised him to go back to work. You could do what you liked, including getting drunk on public time and money. This was Donegal. This was the Garda Síochána. This is the way it is and all involved - gardaí and citizens - accepted it.
It is now unacceptable ever in modern Ireland, under any circumstances, to drink and drive. The general culture has turned against it and no-one who drinks and drives will get any sympathy, understanding or agreement from any quarter for their behaviour. Until that type of attitude persists at every level of society in relation to the gardaí, the techniques and practices of Donegal will remain our daily bread.
Citizens, politicians, judges, civil servants and especially the gardaí themselves must fundamentally adjust attitudes to policing in general and to An Garda Síochána in particular. If this does not happen, we will continue to have the police force we deserve and not the police service we need.
It has been happening to us for long enough: the Kerry Babies case 30 years ago, the heavy gang and the framing of innocent men for the Sallins mail train robbery. Severe beatings in custody go utterly unpunished, such as Derek Fairbrother in Dublin in the 1980s. In the 1990s, we saw Dean Lyons and the Grangegorman murders, the prosecution of Nora Wall, the killing of John Carthy in Abbeylara, the deaths of Brian Rossiter and Terence Wheelock in Garda custody. All of this without even mentioning Donegal.
Advertisements can now be read in the papers these days for new Garda recruits under the headline, "You could be the new face of the Gardaí."
We must do something to make sure that this new face is not the ugly, twisted visage that looks back at us from the mirror today.
Michael Finucane is a solicitor practising in Dublin