History has a lesson for us about part-time and politicised police

THE new president of the Garda Representative Association, John Egan, exhibited incredible insensitivity in essentially issuing a threat to his political bosses. “We are waiting in the long grass for them,” he warned.

The GRA, and the gardaí in general, have a very good case in opposing the new reserve force, which is being cobbled together without proper training. There is chaos in the A&E wards around the country at weekends, but nobody would suggest the introduction of a reserve force of untrained people to act as doctors and nurses to alleviate the problem.

It would probably work because, after killing enough patients, people would take their chances at home. Of course, that would be a crazy remedy, but no dafter than an essentially untrained garda reserve.

We have witnessed in recent years the damage that can be done by a comparatively few rogue gardaí, and this has been at enormous cost to the state. And those involved underwent full training.

How much damage will Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s cursorily trained cops do, and how much will it cost the state? So much of the early trouble in the North was generated by the B Specials. Why would anyone in his or her right mind try to emulate that structure?

It is a fundamental of a democratic society that the police should avoid direct involvement in politics. It was, therefore, mind-blowing that any policeman could be so foolish as to use the analogy of “waiting in the long grass”.

But, in fairness, this was repudiated within 24 hours. GRA general secretary PJ Stone admitted it had made a serious mistake, and he issued an unqualified apology for his president’s remarks.

The Garda Síochána has a tradition of staying out of politics that goes back to the first commissioner, Eoin O’Duffy. He did a great job in depoliticising the police in the 1920s, but that was apparently just to keep them from supporting his opponents because he changed his tune as the opposition was coming to power.

This month marks the 80th anniversary of the foundation of Fianna Fáil. It played a major role in building up our democratic system, despite what Fine Gael would like people to believe.

Fine Gael claims credit for protecting our democracy. Initially the party’s forerunner did, but when Fianna Fáil won the 1932 election, O’Duffy tried to use the Garda Síochána to stage a coup d’état to prevent Eamon de Valera coming to power.

O’Duffy, ironically, had done a good a job as commissioner in insisting that the gardaí stay out of politics, so when he tried to involve them they refused to go along with him. David Neligan, the head of the Special Branch, was aware of what was happening, but did nothing. It was a critical moment in the life of this country. De Valera and company had defied the democratic will of the people in refusing to accept the 1921 Treaty, even to the point of provoking civil war. If Cumann na nGaedheal and the army had gone along with O’Duffy, it would have been a disastrous blow for our democracy.

De Valera was therefore quite right to remove O’Duffy and Neligan. The government offered them other jobs. Neligan — who had been responsible for selecting the people who carried out the massacre at Ballyseedy during the civil war — accepted a job in the Land Commission.

Duffy decided to play the role of the martyr, and the opposition foolishly supported him.

Cumann na nGaedheal and James Dillon’s Centre Party amalgamated to form Fine Gael, with O’Duffy as leader. He promptly made a prize fool of himself. He went around the country proclaiming that democracy was dead in Ireland while he argued that the country should emulate that bloated midget, Benito Mussolini.

Fortunately, WT Cosgrave, Dillon and company came to their senses and ousted O’Duffy in 1934 before he was able to do too much damage.

There are lessons we can learn from this period of our history. For too long people have positioned themselves on one side or the other. They took the view that de Valera was always right, or that he was always wrong, and the other side was always right. The whole thing was a gross oversimplification either way.

DURING the week the inflation figures were published showing that our rate for the 12 months ending in March was 3.8% compared with 2% in the rest of the Eurozone. Finance Minister Brian Cowen warned that we are in danger of pricing ourselves out of the international market if workers demand pay increases to keep pace with inflation. He complained that Irish pay rates have increased by two-and-a-half times the EU average in the past three years and that other economies have made competitive gains in relation to Ireland.

“In Germany, which accounts for 30% of the eurozone economy, employee compensation has increased by only 1.8% over the last three years,” the minister said.

It is great that the Germans are behaving sensibly. Their unemployment rate is well above ours. At present they have around 12% unemployed — one percentage point more than it was at the height of the Great Depression when Adolf Hitler came to power.

Mr Cowen appealed to the social partners to act in the best interests of the economy. He is right, but he and his colleagues have been giving lousy leadership.

When Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932, it quickly developed very good working relations with the public service, even though it reduced the salaries of senior civil servants.

But de Valera led that minority Fianna Fáil government by example. He reduced his own salary by 40%, from £2,500 to £1,500, and the other members of his government cut their own salaries by 33%, from £1,500 to £1,000.

When that government called for pay restraint, they got it because they provided real leadership, in marked contrast with our present crowd which has the nerve to call for restraint after it has plundered our treasury themselves.

The current Government has doubled its salaries since coming to power in 1997. Bertie Ahern is one of the highest paid prime ministers in Europe, getting e15,000 annually more than French premier, and more than four-and-a-half times the salary of the Polish prime minister.

We also have the outrageous situation of the Government doing nothing about Jim McDaid, who last year collected over €150,000 in Dáil salary and expenses, even though he was hardly seen in the Dáil. He only voted six times in the whole year, which was less than 5% of the votes taken in the Dáil chamber. He has openly admitted that he has been concentrating on his medical practice, which earned over €110,000 from medical cards last year.

If a garda tried to engage in that kind of double jobbing, he would be sacked faster than he could say Michael McDowell. The Government is collectively responsible for this outrageous situation, yet it is doing nothing. They are supposed to be our leaders, but the quality of their leadership is a disgrace. In reality they are misleading us; they’re just a selfish shower of lousy gougers.