While progress was seen to be made in some areas of policing at Monday’s meeting of the Garda Authority, the O’Higgins commission’s efforts to access Garda documents exposed the old culture of secrecy, writes Special Correspondent Michael Clifford

A new report into An Garda Síochana has recommended ways for more officers to be assigned to front line policing.

REFORM is very rarely successful or enduring if it is imposed from on high, but if it comes as a consequence of a grassroots groundswell then it can be profound and successful.

TD Clare Daly has accused the Government of deliberately appointing women to key positions within the courts and Gardaí to distract from cronyism.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has today defended Josephine Feehily’s selection as the head of the new independent Garda authority.

Laws to create a new independent Garda authority have been published this afternoon.

The Garda Inspectorate should be replaced by a Criminal Justice Inspectorate, which would supervise the entire criminal justice system, according to an Oireachtas report.

The Department of Justice is closed and secretive and requires "fundamental and sustained organisational and cultural change", a high-level report has concluded.

Acting Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan has defended plans to set up a Garda authority and said it will add additional trust between the public and the force.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has admitted that she does not know exactly who will run the new independent Garda authority.

Former tánaiste Michael McDowell has said "it is the business" of Taoiseach Enda Kenny to explain to the Dáil the controversial circumstances surrounding the resignation of the Garda Commissioner.

After prolonged deliberation, the interim recommendations from the Oireachtas Justice Committee on Garda oversight are outrageous and absurd.

The Garda Ombudsman will be able to conduct electronic surveillance and access communications of gardaí under radical Government plans.

An overarching watchdog is being proposed to oversee the entire justice apparatus, including the job of policing the Garda Ombudsman.

The Oireachtas justice committee is to conduct special sessions on policing, starting in the next Dáil term.

The Labour leadership candidates will go head-to-head in one final round of debates behind closed doors today in front of the party’s lawyers society ahead of this week’s vote for a new leader.

Acting Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan has said an internal survey of frontline gardaí shows they were "hurting" from the succession of controversies battering the force.

A former police watchdog has said there is strong evidence An Garda Síochána has a blue wall which acts as a cover-up for wrongdoing.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties shas said that it is vital an independent Garda authority is put in place without delay.

The Government is rejecting calls for an overhaul in how senior gardaí are appointed after being warned it is "indefensible" that the 200 most senior officers are approved by cabinet.

A 40-day deadline set for a mammoth review of the Department of Justice is "ridiculously short" and belies the fundamental review needed, a leading expert has said.

The justice minister should be stripped of a massive range of police powers extending far beyond oversight to include recruitment, training, equipment, pay and pensions, according to a leading expert.

The Taoiseach must come clean on why he sent a senior civil servant to do his "dirty work" and effectively give former garda commissioner Martin Callinan his P45, opposition TDs have insisted.

Sinn Féin has published proposals to take the power over the Gardaí away from politicians.

Newly appointed Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald is unlikely to go looking for a scalp in the Garda force or the Department of Justice any time soon, judging by her first few days and actions in government.

Transport Minister Leo Varadkar has warned that a culture of change is needed in An Garda Síochána as the Cabinet begins talks this week about setting up a full inquiry into allegations of misconduct.

Frances Fitzgerald, the new justice minister, has refused to express confidence in the head of her department after the Guerin report criticised the inadequate response to serious complaints about gardaí.

The required reading list for the new batch of garda recruits — the first trainees in five years — might be getting a late edition.

In the end, it was not the misleading remarks about garda whistleblowers on the floor of the Dáil; it was not the misuse of confidential information against a political opponent during a live television debate; and it was not the attempt to play down concerns that the Garda watchdog was being monitored.

High-ranking Garda officers were involved in a ploy to coerce citizens into buying hard drugs to boost crime detection figures, the Dáil was told yesterday.

High-ranking Garda officers were involved in a ploy to coerce citizens into buying hard drugs to boost crime detection figures, the Dáil has heard.

Frances Fitzgerald has been appointed as the new Justice Minister after the shock resignation of Alan Shatter over the handling of Garda corruption allegations.

A police authority will uncouple the close relationship between the justice minister and Garda commissioner, says Cormac O’Keeffe.

The planned police authority should include former gardaí, judges, and professionals including mediation and human resource experts, according to mid-ranking officers.

The Government’s plans for an independent Garda authority comes just two months after Justice Minister Alan Shatter spelled out his opposition to such a body.

Transport Minister Leo Varadkar has revealed he is having difficulty “getting his head around” the latest twists in the Garda crisis.

Yesterday’s startling events, Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan’s resignation and Cabinet revelations about widespread Garda telephone bugging, came as close to rendering the acronym GUBU insufficient as any scandal since double-murderer Malcom McArthur was arrested in the home of then attorney general Patrick Connolly in the summer of 1982.

So Pat Rabbitte agrees that the use of the word “disgusting” by the Garda Commissioner was “infelicitous” but goes on to say that the entire affair underlines something which has been a cardinal part of Labour policy, the need for a Garda Authority which would intrude between the Garda Síochána and the minister.

WHAT a day! We all know the old adage that a week is a long time in politics — sometimes it seems a day can be even longer.

THREE of us who work in the community and voluntary sector went to Belfast the other night to meet a group that runs charities in Northern Ireland and to brief them about happenings in our sector in the Republic.

There are growing calls for the two Garda whistleblowers who raised concerns about the cancelling of penalty points to receive an apology over how they were treated.

It is time to redesign the architecture of Garda accountability, writes Mark Kelly

A Garda Inspectorate review has said there needs to be a major improvement in co-operation between inter-agencies handling child sexual abuse cases.

INTELLIGENCE-LED policing is the most effective way to tackle gangland crime, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has said.