Garda Commissioner Drew Harris: I’m hardwired to protect society

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris says he is “hardwired” as a police officer to serve and protect society.

“We cannot tolerate that the vulnerable in our society are the subject of crime, and that’s what motivates me,” he said.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Sunday with Miriam, Mr Harris said policing is a “very straight” occupation — it is to get between wrongdoers and the people they wish to victimise.

His ultimate aim is to leave his position as head of An Garda Síochána better than he found it, he said. In five years, he wants to look back and say: “You did well there.”

“I have been policing for 34 years and am pretty much hardwired into police work now,” he said. “I am very much here to support the organisation as well as lead it.”

Mr Harris spoke about the murder of his father, Alwyn Harris, an RUC superintendent who was killed by the IRA in October 1989.

When he was sworn in as commissioner last week, he had his father’s police whistle in his pocket as a “tangible reminder”.

Asked how he felt about the IRA now, and other organisations aligned to it, he said it was much the same as he thought of other terrorist groups.

“They seek to overturn democracy and they seek to do it through violent means and they are very much driven by hatred,” he said.

He sees his appointment as commissioner as a “natural flow” from the 1998 Good Friday agreement that recognised the two traditions on the island of Ireland.

He regards himself as Irish and it feels very natural to be protecting the people of Ireland, he said.

His aim is to head a police organisation that is seen to be open and accountable, to uphold the rule of law, to be responsive to local communities and to be responsive to change in demands.

“There is trust in the gardaí,” said Mr Harris.

“Perhaps there is less trust in the senior management and myself but I have to work on that.”

He also said he could not envisage a situation where he would have information from his time in the PSNI that An Garda Síochána did not know.

Asked if he had files on the perpetrators of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, he replied: “No.”

What information there was would “lie with the police service of Northern Ireland” and it was for them to deal with that appropriately, he said.

Mr Harris also said he had a duty to arrest former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in 2014 in connection with the 1972 disappearance and murder of Jean McConville.

“If you are conducting an investigation you go where the evidence takes you,” he said. It was his duty to conduct legitimate inquiries, no matter how contentious they might seem, he said.

.“That is what the rule of law is about and none of us is above the rule of law.”