Are some guards still above the law?

CHANGE is a serious dose. Change is difficult and painful, and it can be excruciating. So it goes for an individual. For an organisation in which resides great power, change can be the harbinger of tremendous upheaval.

Change, we are told, is blowing through the culture in An Garda Síochána. This is as a direct result of the recent oversight controversies and attitudes towards a member of the force who highlighted wrongdoing until it was finally addressed.

A commissioner has resigned. The interim commissioner has indicated that all has changed, changed utterly. This could be the enthusiasm of a new cultural broom, or it might be heard, metaphorically, as the desperate plea of the alcoholic who pledges everything will be different, once he manages to bring his drinking under control.