Future all-Ireland police agency should focus on 'quality of service'

Former Garda commissioner Drew Harris said the 'local connection' of gardaí is 'gold', where local people frequently know the name of their local gardaí and where local gardaí are involved in 'all aspects' of local life. 'You couldn’t say that of Northern Ireland.'

The potential of an all-island policing service working and being accepted could be achieved by concentrating on providing a “high quality service”, the former Garda commissioner Drew Harris has said.

Mr Harris, who retired last September, said this could be the alternative route into building a police service acceptable to the unionist community, in the eventuality of some kind of united Ireland.

But he cautioned examples of building such a new service were “pretty rare” and the legitimacy of the service in unionist communities would be a “generational” matter.

Mr Harris, who described himself as coming from a “moderate” unionist background, served 34 years in the RUC and the PSNI before being appointed commissioner in September 2018.

Talking to the ARINS Project, a research programme into the future of the island, Mr Harris said there was “another route” into building an all-Ireland policing service.

In an interview with Professor Colin Graham of Maynooth University, he said this route concentrated on the “importance of crime fighting, the importance actually of protecting the vulnerable”.

We have a huge epidemic of violence against women, and there's routes into protecting people who are vulnerable in this society on this island, which actually, then does bring legitimacy — being responsive to victims and providing a high-quality service.

Mr Harris said: “You know, the past is going to be there and it's constantly going to be dredged up if people want to use it. We can't avoid that.

“But perhaps the way through that is the manner in which we would provide the policing service.” 

He said An Garda Siochána had “very contentious beginnings” and in the 1920s and 1930s had to establish itself and its legitimacy. 

'Two different cultures around policing'

"So, it's not that it can't be done," he said. "It's just the examples of it being done are pretty rare”. 

He also said there are “two different cultures around policing” between the PSNI and An Garda Síochána.

He said the “local connection” of gardaí is “gold”, where local people frequently know the name of their local gardaí and where local gardaí are involved in “all aspects” of local life.

“You couldn’t say that of Northern Ireland,” he said.

He said another issue is the scale of a joined policing service, with sworn members numbering into the early 20,000s, which he said would be second only to the London Met in Ireland and Britain.

He said joining the services would be a “huge undertaking” from a structural point of view, but said it was “not impossible”.

Mr Harris said the other big issue was the security function that An Garda Síochána has.

He believes it would be better if policing is “out” of some aspects of security — such as espionage.

He said liberal democracies — like Britain and Ireland — are precious and face mounting threats, including interference with elections and cyber attacks.

He mentioned the “swarm of drones flying off Dublin Bay” after a plane carrying Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy landed at Dublin.

He said the increasing threat means liberal democracies might need “new models of national security” to protect themselves.