Two victories for relentless policework: Cases show best side of gardaí

EVEN the most ardent, one-eyed champion of An Garda Síochána would have to concede that the force’s credibility took a battering over the penalty points scandal and how two whistleblowers — Sergeant Maurice McCabe and former Garda John Wilson — were treated so poorly by the force’s officer corps. 

That the men have been vindicated underlines the hubris that shaped the force’s circle-the- wagons culture and a modus operandi that sometimes put loyalty to colleagues before honesty.

The performance given by former Commissioner Martin Callinan at an Oireachtas committee hearing seemed from a different age, when authority imagined itself unaccountable and free to be autocratic.

Mr Callinan’s unwise “disgusting” attack on the whistleblowers sparked a chain of events that eventually cost him his career — though events around that “resignation” remain a mystery.

Last November’s shocking report from Garda Inspector Bob Olson that revealed how crime statistics were massaged and how serious crimes were downgraded to create a better impression of the force’s efficiency, further damaged its place in society.

Our police force, like it or not, was under a pretty dark cloud.

How reassuring it is then that, in the last week, two examples of how committed and determined police work can so powerfully serve society were so very obvious.

How reassuring, how reconfirming it is for An Garda Síochána and its relationship with society that the positive, admirable characteristics of unrelenting, vocational policing were shown in such a decisive, positive light in two courtrooms.

The most obvious example is the conviction of predatory sadist Graham Dwyer for the murder of Elaine O’Hara, but the family and friends of 42-year-old Paud O’Leary, who was killed in a hit-and-run tragedy by Shane Fitzgerald in July 2012 at Gneeveguilla, Co Kerry, will also recognise the long, painstaking work undertaken to convict Fitzgerald.

It is a frightening reality that Dwyer might still be at large but for the instincts and determination of Roundwood’s Garda James O’Donoghue whose suspicions were provoked when anglers brought him bondage equipment they had discovered in Vartry Reservoir.

Who would have known about this discovery if Garda O’Donoghue had put these items aside and forgotten about them? Dwyer’s next victim possibly?

But he did not and today a killer is behind bars.

It is difficult to underestimate the scale of the challenge involved in linking the human remains found in Killakee forest, sex toys and mobile phones broken up by the person who dumped them in Vartry Reservoir, but gardaí did just that and secured last Friday’s conviction of Dwyer.

The Gneeveguilla killing required equally determined investigating and the local police were more than equal to the task.

Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan has promised a renewed police service and these two convictions — and the 27,000 applications for 300 recruit positions — suggest that a commitment to policing exists that may make that task somewhat easier than it seemed just a year ago.