GSOC head criticises Garda disciplinary ‘maze’
One of the speakers at the event was Judge Mary Ellen Ring, chair of the Garda Ombudsman Commission (GSOC).
She displayed a complicated diagram representing the steps that must be followed in dealing with any complaint against a member of the force, including disciplinary action against anybody found to have transgressed.
Describing the process as a maze, she said: “If we go out of any of these boxes, we’re told we can’t. We are [trying] to put forward ways of making sense of the maze, which you, the community and the gardaí, have to navigate.”
A complicated process, the Garda disciplinary maze takes up a huge amount of time and resources. This in a police service that we are constantly told is stretched.
GSOC is at the coalface of dealing with Garda discipline. Its chair is quite obviously frustrated at a system that, to a large extent, makes GSOC’s job all but impossible in places.
