Justice review of gardaí ‘meaningless’

A Department of Justice review into numerous claims of Garda misconduct has been described as meaningless by one of the families whose complaint it is examining.

Lucia O’Farrell, whose son Shane, 23, was killed in a hit and run in 2011, said there is a conflict of interest because the review of how gardaí handled his case will be overseen by the barrister who represented her son’s killer in the subsequent trial.

She has written to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald to say it is “totally unfair” that Conor Devally has been appointed as one of two senior counsel overseeing the review.

There will be five junior counsel on the seven-person panel, which will examine 220 allegations of Garda misconduct.

Mrs O’Farrell has also written to Attorney General Máire Whelan and said: “Conor Devally should not be on a panel to oversee my complaints; he defended the man who [killed] my son.

“As an adviser but also as a mother and a human being, you cannot possibly stand over the appointment.”

The panel is asked to make a recommendation in each case on “what further action, if any, might be appropriate”.

Mrs O’Farrell said she cannot have confidence in the process because there is an “appalling conflict of interest”.

The department said that “appropriate steps will be taken to ensure that nothing arises which might in any way detract from the integrity of the review mechanism, including issues of conflict of interest”.

The O’Farrell family have been campaigning for an inquiry into the conduct of members of the gardaí and other state agencies before and after Shane was killed in Monaghan on August 2, 2011.

A Lithuanian, Zigimantas Gridziuska, subsequently pleaded guilty for failing to stop at the scene of an accident, and received an eight-month suspended sentence.

He had been stopped by a drug squad detective an hour before killing the law student, but had been allowed to carry on.