Governing council rejects former GRA president for €150k general secretary role
According to sources in the GRA, Garda Damien McCarthy did not reapply once the whole process had begun anew. File picture: Dylan Vaughan
A candidate selected in a professional process for the top job in the Garda Representative Association (GRA) was rejected by the body’s governing council, which included colleagues of his who had also applied for the job.
Damien McCarthy, a former president of the GRA, was the successful candidate to emerge from a competition run by recruitment professionals Lansdowne for the €150,000-a-year job of general secretary of the organisation.
Following the process, the GRA’s Central Executive Council (CEC) voted last March on whether to accept the successful candidate.
Under the GRA constitution, two-thirds of the 31-member CEC must ratify any candidate for the job.
Among the CEC members voting on Garda McCarthy’s candidacy were at least four people who themselves had applied for the job.
The necessary two-thirds majority was not reached and a decision was taken to begin the process again.
The understands that no reason was given for rejecting the successful candidate from the recruitment process.
According to sources in the GRA, Garda McCarthy did not reapply once the whole process had begun anew.
When contacted, Garda McCarthy said that he had nothing to say on the matter at this point.
A spokesperson for the GRA confirmed the vote last March.
He said he could not confirm whether any CEC members were defeated candidates.
“I can confirm that if a defeated candidate happened to be an elected member of the CEC, then he or she would be entitled to vote on behalf of their delegates and members.”
This is the second time that the GRA’s CEC has rejected a candidate who came through the professional process.
Last year, the Workplace Relations (WRC) ruled on a case in which a candidate for the position of assistant to the secretary general twice failed to receive the two-thirds backing of the CEC despite coming through a professional recruitment process.
Garda Tara McManus’s lawyer claimed that she had been the victim of an “old boys club” and the hearing was told that a member of the interview panel wrote to the GRA’s general secretary expressing “extreme anger and frustration” over the process at the CEC, calling for it to be “open and transparent”.
The WRC ruled that Garda McManus should be appointed to the job for which she had been the successful candidate.
Last month, the GRA announced that its new secretary-general is Ronan Slevin, the successful candidate in the second recruitment process after Garda McCarthy was rejected.
Mr Slevin had been deputy secretary general and a member of An Garda Síochána for more than 30 years.
He received the required two-thirds backing of the CEC, of which he was not a member on either occasion and therefore not entitled to vote.
In 2017, the GRA commissioned a report from consultants Ampersand to examine how it operated.
The report found that “there is significant dysfunction in how the elected leadership body functions".
"The dysfunctional behaviours are seriously disturbing the lower levels of the organisation and affecting its representative effectiveness," it said.
It noted that the previous year €1.46m, representing nearly half of all the GRA’s income, was spent on travel and subsistence.
Two-thirds of that amount went to the CEC.
By those sums, the 31 members of the CEC pulled in an average of €25,000 in travel and expenses.
Ampersand made a number of recommendations, including a cull of the sub-committees of the CEC, which added greatly to the travel and subsistence bill.
When asked whether the recommendations on rationalising sub-committees have been complied with, the GRA spokesperson said that the Ampersand report was “duly debated and discussed and all recommendations passed at that year’s special delegate conference were actioned and progressed”.
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