Five reports and counting but criticisms of the gardaí are the same

IF the language used in the latest Morris Tribunal reports sounded familiar, it’s because many of the comments and criticisms made by Mr Justice Frederick Morris also featured in his first report two years ago.

Indiscipline, dishonesty, lack of protection for the whistleblower and the need for wide-ranging reforms are common themes running through all five of the tribunal chairman’s hefty publications.

The temptation is to conclude that little has happened over that period to make the changes so urgently implored by Justice Morris and backed by Justice Minister Michael McDowell.

Since the publication of that first report in July 2004, however, a succession of working groups, review teams and advisory bodies have been set up to consider and/or act on the tribunal’s findings.

Immediately following the 2004 report, the garda commissioner assigned Deputy Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald to examine the findings and report back to him on the implications for the force.

Deputy Commr Fitzgerald was subsequently put in charge of 9 separate internal working groups set up to examine in detail various aspects of the report ranging from erosion of discipline to handling of informants to management structures.

Those working groups have continued to meet, although because they are internal with membership confined to rank-and-file gardaí and management, it is hard to gauge what progress they have made.

The Fitzgerald working groups were a response to the overall findings of Justice Morris who said at the time: “An Garda Síochána is losing its character as a disciplined force.”

Justice Morris also made specific reference to the need for better communication between garda headquarters and the Department of Justice.

The response to that recommendation is impossible for an outsider to measure — Mr McDowell insists he and the commissioner are “hand in glove”, while the Garda Representative Association speaks like relations between the force and the minister have never been worse.

JUSTICE Morris also urged reform of garda promotion procedures and said garda disciplinary codes needed to be amended to put an inescapable obligation on members of the force to account for their movements when questioned by a senior officer. “A failure to answer, or to answer truthfully, should be regarded as a major breach of discipline inviting dismissal,” he said.

Mr McDowell responded by directing officials from his department to form a working group and “urgently identify the specific management and statutory changes required” by all the recommendations Justice Morris made.

He noted that he had already published the draft Garda Síochána Bill which made provision for some form of inspectorate and revamped garda complaints mechanism. However, in the year between the publication of that first report and the follow-up report in June 2005, he came in for criticism for failing to make progress on the bill.

When the second report was published, Justice Morris called for a review of the bill to include provisions for an entirely independent body to which people with concerns could turn — in essence, an ombudsman.

He repeated his call for gardaí to be obliged to account truthfully for their actions or risk dismissal by their silence. He also called for a review of the way informants were handled.

The Garda Síochána Act was published the very next month, setting out details of the inspectorate, the ombudsman commission, and a system of Joint Policing Committees.

Yet another year on and the joint publication of the third, fourth and fifth Morris Reports this week brought further calls from Justice Morris for reform and further warnings that discipline was in disarray.

There are more Morris reports in the pipeline, however, and the questions asked then will be as much about the responses of the minister and commissioner to the challenges thrown down by the tribunal as about the behaviour of those who gave rise to the tribunal in the first place.