A Garda Ombudsman and a Garda Authority must be appointed if public anxiety concerning the behaviour of some members of the force is to be allayed and the moral influence of the police, as servants of the people, safeguarded.
For five years now, reports from County Donegal of criminal, unethical and unprofessional behaviour by individual gardai have dripped like acid onto the reputation of the Garda Síochána as a whole, causing serious public disquiet. In all of that time, the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, failed to take rigorous, corrective action. Only now, in the run-up to a general election, does he announce a judicial inquiry that may run for years; be conducted partly in private and have to await the completion of criminal cases before publication.
It is too little and far too late. There is an impression abroad that individual members of the Garda Síochána are out of control; that traditional disciplinary mechanisms are inadequate and that those who break the law are not being called to account in spite of three separate Garda investigations.
The Minister has proposed to deal with this problem by appointing a new, independent Garda Inspectorate under legislation that has yet to be published and may take years to implement. His cautious approach has differed from that advocated by his own Government when urging root-and-branch reform of the RUC. Those reforms, involving the appointment of a Police Authority and a Police Ombudsman, were offered as draft legislation in this State by the Labour Party two years ago, but rejected by the Minister.
Two months ago, under pressure from Fine Gael and the Labour Party in the Dáil, Mr O'Donoghue refused to establish a judicial inquiry into the conduct of members of the Garda Síochána in County Donegal. Instead, he appointed Mr Shane Murphy SC to read all the files and papers in his department which catalogued five years of internal investigations. These involved the handling by the Garda of the death of Mr Richard Barron; the alleged harassment of the McBrearty family and claims that explosives were stolen from Garda care and hidden in special caches so that certain officers would get credit for "finding" them. Mr Murphy's report to the Minister will not be published, in spite of an earlier commitment. But it obviously was of such a damning nature that a sworn inquiry is now to be established as a matter of urgency under a former president of the High Court, Mr Justice Morris.
The need for a comprehensive reform of the relationship between the Garda Síochána, the political system and the public they serve has been obvious for years, in the context of greater accountability and transparency. But the Government and the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, failed to grasp the nettle. The events that transpired in County Donegal, and developments elsewhere, should become a wake-up call for this society. Doing nothing and ignoring unpalatable realities is a recipe for disaster.