The need for radical reform of the Garda Síochána complaints system has long been recognised. But it is only now, after years of procrastination and dithering, that the Coalition Government is finally preparing to address the issue.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, announced that a three-tier disciplinary process will be established under a Garda Inspectorate to address abuses like those alleged to have taken place in Donegal. The necessary legislation will be introduced next year.
Mr McDowell has shown some zeal in this matter. His public support for the initiative taken by Mr Gordon Holmes, chairman of the Garda Complaints Board, who ordered an unprecedented investigation of Garda behaviour during a street protest last May, and then recorded a lack of co-operation from rank-and-file members, was refreshing.
The Minister also chose a key phrase from that report when addressing new Garda recruits last week. He warned that they could not put loyalty to colleagues ahead of loyalty to the force and to the community they served.
The idea of a Garda Inspectorate is not new. The Minister's predecessor, Mr John O'Donoghue, promised such a development last year when under pressure to adopt a Northern Ireland-style Police Authority and Ombudsman. However, Mr McDowell's inspectorate may be given sharper teeth.
The urgency of the issue was emphasised by the Garda Síochána Complaints Board when it recorded "a general lack of public confidence" in the system last April. In its report for 2001, it criticised the procedures and the law under which it operated and complained of a lack of resources. It noted that long delays in investigating complaints meant that the right of the Director of Public Prosecutions to summarily prosecute a garda had "effectively been removed". In spite of all that, its funding in the recent Book of Estimates was reduced by 2 per cent. The Minister for Justice may have decided that there was little point in spending increased resources on a board which, by its own admission, is largely ineffective. That makes it all the more vital to give speedy effect to the establishment of a Garda Inspectorate.
There is a perception abroad that some members of the gardaí are out of control and that traditional disciplinary mechanisms are inadequate to deal with the situation or to call them to account. Mr McDowell now appears determined to do something about that. In all of this, it is important to emphasise the enormous debt society owes to the Garda Síochána and to many thousands of its courageous and hard-working men and women. But reform is now urgently required if their hard-won authority and social standing within the community is to be protected.