McDowell proposal ‘sinister’, say gardaí

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell’s new Garda Inspectorate is “sinister and dangerous” and akin to his own “secret police force”, gardaí said yesterday.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) said the minister’s claim that the proposed inspectorate represented best practice was “a load of bunk”.

Mr McDowell said the inspectorate would investigate organisational and management issues within the force and would be answerable to the Minister for Justice.

“The setting up of an inspectorate to report directly to the minister is sinister and dangerous. The Minister’s Secret Police Force would report directly to him; this is political interference at its worst,” said the editorial in the Garda Review, the journal of the GRA.

Mr McDowell announced the establishment of the new body in the wake of the interim report of the Morris Tribunal into alleged corruption in the Donegal division.

The report highlighted falling discipline within the force, poor state-of-investigation files, negligence of senior management in Donegal and a lack of supervision by garda headquarters.

Mr McDowell said the body would investigate these and other areas and ensure standards met best policing practice.

He said the body would operate separately to the Ombudsman Commission, which will investigate complaints made against gardaí.

The Garda Review editorial said the whole question of efficiency and effectiveness was already duplicated in the Garda Síochána Bill with the establishment of the Ombudsman.

The leader writer said it was primarily the job of the Garda Commission to give an account of the force’s efficiency to the Minister.

“The Minister has claimed best practice: that the proposal is akin to the Inspectorate in the United Kingdom. What a load of bunk!”

He said the system in the UK was entirely different.

The GRA - representing rank-and-file gardaí - said Mr McDowell was making the Inspectorate directly answerable to him as he was reluctant to allow any reports into the public arena.

“He does not want the members of An Garda Síochána to be advised of the shortcomings of any particular policing initiative or the overall policing requirements that prevail on any given day. No - the Minister wants to be advised secretly on issues of the Force; then either to ignore some reports or take the public credit for others that create better news stories.”

A spokeswoman for Mr McDowell said the GRA’s analysis was flawed. “There’s no question of this being a secret police force. It will be a transparent process that is a widely-used tool of management in other similar jurisdictions.”