Blow to gardaí as CSO delays stats

An Garda Síochána’s credibility has suffered another blow after the CSO decided for a second time not to publish Garda crime statistics.

The decision was made after Garda bosses told the CSO they had ongoing doubts over the quality of their homicide data — and wanted to carry out a “deeper” examination.

It comes as Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan was expected back in Ireland after attending a conference in Europe, amid ongoing calls for her to step down over the breath test and penalty point reports.

Skills Minister John Halligan said “confidence is eroding” in gardaí, but Taoiseach Leo Varadkar avoided answering questions on the commissioner’s future at two events yesterday.

The CSO initially suspended publication of Garda crime figures last June after it identified quality concerns regarding Garda homicide figures specifically.

Last April, Ms O’Sullivan told the Policing Authority the force was conducting a review based on classification issues regarding 41 homicides recorded between 2013 and 2015.

This review expanded in June when the commissioner told the authority a further 89 homicides between 2003 and 2017 had not been reported to the CSO because they had been recorded incorrectly on the Garda Pulse system.

The CSO had planned to publish two sets of quarterly crime figures on September 20 but was informed by gardaí that they wanted to conduct further work on the homicide data.

In a statement, the CSO said: “Following discussions with An Garda Síochána, the Central Statistics Office has further deferred the publication of Recorded Crime statistics.

“This follows on from An Garda Síochána’s recent decision to extend their review of homicide data.”

Olive Loughnane of the CSO Crime Section told the Irish Examiner the gardaí had said they should be able to be in a position to give a timeframe for delivery of the data next week.

However, she said she did not expect the data “anytime soon”.

She said the gardaí had supplied the CSO with data for publication, but said they wanted to carry out further work on homicide figures.

“This is their data set,” said Ms Loughnane.

“They were telling us they needed to extend and do more work. They said ‘look, there’s something here we want to look at at a deeper level’ and, because of that, we took the decision that we will wait.”

At the public meeting with the Policing Authority last June, Ms O’Sullivan said an in-depth review was taking place on homicide statistics and to ensure that there were no consequences in the investigations concerned.

Authority chair Josephine Feehily expressed concern at the impact on “community confidence and potentially on victims”, while then authority member, Vicky Conway, described the revelations as “alarming”.

Ms Feehily noted that they still had not received a report on 41 homicide cases, revealed to the authority last April.

In a statement at the end of July, the authority said the absence of a timeline for a completed report on homicide data was “increasingly difficult to understand”.

Mr Halligan, said: “I think the Irish public deserve an explanation as to what has happened over the last number of years. The confidence in the gardaí, there’s no question about it, it is eroding, and I think we need to steady it.

“There are a number of commissions at present taking place and when they review what has happened we’ll see where we go from there.”

The Independent Alliance TD made the comment at an event attended by Mr Varadkar and Tánaiste and Enterprise Minister Frances Fitzgerald, a former justice minister, both of whom declined to take questions.

Mr Varadkar did not respond to a question on the commissioner’s future at a later press launch at Government Buildings.