Garda battle against reserve will go up in smoke. Just ask the publicans

I HAD a strong sense of déjà vu watching the news coverage of the large meeting of gardaí called by their various representative organisations in a Sligo hotel on Monday night.

This meeting is the first in a series they have planned nationwide to launch a campaign of opposition to the Government’s proposals to set up a Garda Reserve. At the meeting there was a lot of belligerent talk, a lot of verbal bashing of the Minister for Justice and standing ovations from the rank- and-file in support of the strong stance taken by their leaders.

Watching the footage I couldn’t at first figure out what it reminded me of. Then it came to me. I had a flashback to similar news reports in the autumn of 2003 about the publicans’ campaign against the smoking ban. They, too, held meetings in hotels nationwide as a show of strength in opposition to a different minister’s proposal. They, too, drew determined battle lines.

For the publicans and their opposition to the smoking ban, things came to a head at a large meeting in early October 2003 in Portlaoise where 1,200 of them gathered. In defiance they lit up; they were fired up and they lost the run of themselves. Some of those who went to the podium threatened to withhold VAT payments, while others threatened to leave their pubs closed. Then came a classic comment. “Who runs this country?”, demanded a Munster delegate from the podium. “We do,” he declared.

In Clearing The Air, a book written by Noel Gilmore which tells the definitive story of the introduction of the smoking ban, the then Health Minister Micheál Martin tells how the morning after these comments from the publicans’ meeting were broadcast, his department was flooded with phone calls and emails. People were furious at the audacity of the publicans.

Martin also told how in the following days people were stopping him in the street, saying: “You can’t give in to people like that. Who do they think they are?”

I very much doubt if Michael McDowell was getting stopped in the street on Tuesday morning, but if the garda campaign against the introduction of a reserve force keeps going the way it seems to be headed, he may be having a day like that soon.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI), like the publicans before them, are set on a self-destructive course. The Garda Reserve is going to happen. This campaign may shore up the leadership of the garda representative organisations with their rank-and-file in the short term, but ultimately they must know they cannot win this campaign.

They can’t win because they are opposing a policy which, like the smoking ban, enjoys overwhelming public and political support. Provision for the introduction of a Garda Reserve has been specifically facilitated by a section of the Garda Siochána Act 2005.

This act had a slow and at times difficult passage through the Dáil and Seanad. Many aspects of it were hotly contested and many of its significant measures were amended extensively during its passage. However, there was almost unanimous support for the establishment of a Garda Reserve in both Houses of the Oireachtas. TDs and senators from the Opposition and Government benches spoke of how it would be a significant means of integrating the gardaí with the locality since the reserve members would be drawn from the community.

They saw it as supplementing rather than replacing the work of full-time members. There was an interesting debate in both Houses about how it was important that the Reserve be recruited and trained properly. The Garda Commissioner has now come up with proposals, the Government has approved them, and they are on their way to being implemented.

In their initial opposition, AGSI and the GRA tried cleverly to undermine the proposal by attacking what they have suggested would be the technicalities of its implementation.

They have claimed that reserve members would get only 24 hours’ training. However, this week the minister and the commissioner confirmed that Reserve members would receive training for at least 120 hours, which is at the top end of international practice.

THE representative organisations expressed concern about risks associated with members of the reserve operating on their own. However, it has been confirmed this week that they will work only alongside full-time members. The representative organisations have also suggested that the reserve would become a means for illegal organisations to infiltrate the gardaí or its computer system. The most colourful example of this scaremongering was a press release from the Limerick branch of AGSI outlandishly headlined ‘Crime gangs could infiltrate Garda Reserve.’

However, this week it was also confirmed that the reserve would go though precisely the same vetting procedure as full-time members.

As GRA and AGSI leaders have been probed further, it has became apparent that these technical objections have merely been dressing for what is actually an objection to the idea of such a force per se. As stakeholders, the members of an Garda Siochána are entitled to be consulted on how the reserve will operate and the partnership model that has managed change in other parts of the public service can also achieve this in the gardaí. However, they have no right to a veto on its introduction. Neither will they find any public support for seeking to scupper the proposal in its entirety.

The Garda Reserve will be a very important innovation. There are similar forces in many countries and the template being rolled out here is drawing from the experience of, and deriving best practice from, some of those forces.

The first phase of the plan envisages 900 such officers being in place within eight months. As earlier as September they could be making a significant impact on the streets not only in terms of reassurance and visibility, but also in many other aspects of public security and safety.

This would free up many full-time members to do what they want to do most, which is preventing and investigating the more serious crimes. The complaint has been made by the GRA that it is not value for money to spend the €12 million assigned to get just 900 members who will be available only part-time, usually in the evenings or at weekends.

However, these are precisely the times when additional garda activity is required. The availability of these reserve personnel could, for example, make a significant contribution to road safety by freeing up hundreds of full-time members for additional road patrols in the late night and early morning hours at weekends.

What is most disappointing about the GRA and AGSI outbursts against the reserve is that it bodes ill for their attitude towards the rest of the necessary reforms which are due to follow. The reserve force is one of the first practical implementations of the change programme provided for in the Garda Act. The members of the force should be embracing that reform programme, not seeking to shout it down.