Recruiting 2,000 gardaí is an opportunity to review their training and deployment, writes Carol Coulter
Despite the predictable scepticism about the practicality of Mr McDowell's proposals to increase Garda strength to 14,000 by 2008, it seems likely that this target will come close, at least, to being achieved. Around 1,100 will be recruited every year for the next three years, against which must be set an estimated 1,350 retirements. There should therefore be a net gain of about 1,900 to be added to the 12,200 due to be in the force by next month.
This offers an opportunity for the Government and Opposition alike to stop focusing on absolute numbers, and to look instead at what the gardaí do and are trained to do.
The litany of shortcomings in the force, as revealed by successive court cases and ongoing tribunals, is by now well known. Large sums of money have been paid by the taxpayer for damage done to members of the public by members of the Garda Síochána.
Members of the judiciary have repeatedly chosen not to believe the account of events certain members of the force have given in court on oath, and have described their evidence as unbelievable. The report of the Morris tribunal was damning of a number of gardaí in Donegal, and is still going on. We are also awaiting the report of the Barr tribunal into the shooting dead of John Carthy at Abbeylara.
The problems are not limited to cases that end up in court or in a tribunal. Other developments suggest that members of the force have a sense of alienation from large swathes of the population, and little empathy with them.
This was shown by the Garda's violent response to the Reclaim the Streets demonstration in 2002, which has given rise to a number of prosecutions of members of the force.
Further, a report on public order last year from the National Crime Council revealed that the policing style in working-class suburbs was much more hostile and aggressive than that in more middle-class areas closer to the city centre.
The Minister for Justice announced yesterday that entry requirements for new recruits are to be examined to ensure that they do not indirectly discriminate against members of ethnic minorities, which is to be welcomed.
This process should also examine what needs to be done to recruit members from within working-class communities. The minimum educational requirements - a D at ordinary level in five Leaving Certificate subjects, including Irish - are not prohibitive in this regard. At the moment the image the Garda Síochána has is of a force with its origins primarily in rural Ireland and provincial towns, steeped in the traditions of the GAA.
There was much talk yesterday of adapting the Garda Training College at Templemore to the demands of the new recruits. But there was no indication of any scrutiny of this model of Garda training, where young recruits spend almost three years entirely surrounded by other members of the force, both as fellow-students, teachers and as gardaí in the stations to which they are sent as part of their training.
Apart from involvement in sports clubs and meeting people in the course of their work, they are almost as cloistered as seminarians in years gone by.
Opportunities to mix and, more importantly, discuss and debate, with their contemporaries in an educational setting are very limited. There is no challenging of the conventional collective wisdom of the force by the teaching staff, though an occasional representative of an NGO visits Templemore for a set-piece lecture on Travellers or rape victims. It is true that some student gardaí visit other establishments for certain segments of their training, but it does little to dilute the "them and us" culture that then emerges in events like the Reclaim the Streets debacle.
While police in the UK are educated in training colleges, and receive less training than they do here, the trend in other countries like the US and Australia is for them to be educated in universities. Given that there will be extreme pressure on Templemore in the next few years, it is an opportunity at least to experiment with the use of other third-level campuses and their staff for a portion of the course.
There has also been little public discussion of what many gardaí actually do. Each city Garda station must have at least a sergeant and two gardaí on each 12-hour shift. With 44 stations in Dublin, it takes more than 500 just to man them before a single garda gets on to the streets or investigates a crime. Stations in other cities and around the country similarly eat up manpower. The tasks actually carried out by gardaí manning stations need to be carefully examined.
The tasks entrusted to members of the force under legislation include the ludicrous. Under the Noxious Weeds Act they were required to hunt down noxious weeds. Under the Control of Dogs Act they were required to round up stray dogs. While other public servants now carry out these functions, they still have to stamp passport applications. There must be a better way of using Garda time, while ensuring the integrity of Irish passports.
The Garda Síochána has 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.
Yet Irish society has changed profoundly in that time. The Garda Síochána should be prepared for changes just as profound.