Morris Tribunal report - Confidence in gardaí must be restored

IN light of the unrelenting savaging which the Garda Siochána received from the Morris Tribunal into garda corruption, any assurance from Justice Minister Michael McDowell that there would be no toleration of such appalling behaviour is worthless.

It has already happened, and the fact that such practices have been endemic to some extent in our national police force can only be damaging to public confidence in the force’s ability to be impartial.

Neither is it appropriate that the reports were released in the absence of the Dáil which should have had an immediate opportunity to debate the grave issues contained in them.

Mr Justice Frederick Morris, a former president of the High Court, found that the gardaí had been plagued by mass insubordination, and discipline had been seriously eroded.

While the general public was prepared to hear the worst of individual members of the force in Donegal, it was deeply worrying and unsettling that he found it was not confined to the county.

Mr Justice Morris delivered a devastating indictment of garda management in declaring that proper discipline had been lost in the force, and that cumbersome machinery was used to deal with complaints.

The Morris findings come not too long after Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy issued an apology to the Carthy family on foot of the Barr Tribunal which investigated the shooting of John Carthy by the Emergency Response Unit after a 25-hour stand-off outside his Abbeylara home and found senior gardaí in charge of the siege made fundamental errors managing the stand-off.

Although Mr Justice Morris identified specific misbehaviour by a number of individual officers in Donegal throughout the mid-1990s, his remarks will have fundamental reverberations for the appalling disciple he outlined.

It is hardly coincidental that Justice Minister Michael McDowell published a draft new disciplinary code for gardaí to coincide with the latest Morris Tribunal reports. This can only be regarded with a certain amount of cynicism, being seen as some kind of quick solution aimed at damage limitation to what Morris exposed.

Given the scathing and comprehensive criticism levelled at the force by Mr Justice Morris, it is a matter of extreme urgency that the confidence and respect of the public be restored in our national police force.

However, already, GRA general secretary PJ Stone has described the minister’s timing as “opportunistic” and said it made a “mockery” of the Garda consultation and conciliation process between the department, management and the staff associations.

Mr McDowell has acknowledged, because he could not do otherwise, that the finding by the tribunal that discipline had been severely eroded was a very grave thing.

In considering his draft proposals, Mr McDowell should bear in mind that Mr Justice Morris called for firm but fair measures to combat abuse of the system and restore morale.