Strengthen law to speed garda reform - Gardaí stonewalling, say GSOC

In recent years, An Garda Síochána has endured negative, destructive attention.

Its morale has been undermined; its insular, sometimes aloof, culture criticised relentlessly; and, most of all, its relationships with the public and Government have been strained. The force, like all public institutions, has had to cope with a new economic reality, one that often meant it did not have the resources to do the job it and the public wished it to do. Recruits’ pay scales are inadequate and well below those their senior colleagues enjoyed at the start of their service. These issues, and shortages all across our public services, must question the wisdom of promising to end the €4bn-a-year USC tax over the next five years.

The force has also had to cope with a new level of criminal violence, violence almost on a par with the paramilitary outrages of the last century. It has done so courageously and without complaint. It also had to deal with controversy around how whistleblowers, nearly all of them vindicated, were treated. For a time, it seemed as if the force was its own worst enemy.