Mick Clifford: Confidence vote a sign of bizarre goings-on within An Garda Síochána
Drew Harris became Garda Commissioner in September 2018. However, the confidence vote during the week suggests that things haven’t turned out as planned. Picture: Andy Gibson
Crisis, what crisis? Last Wednesday, Commissioner Drew Harris said there was no crisis in An Garda Síochána. He may well be correct, but there is something bizarre going on when rank-and-file gardai are asked to vote confidence in the boss.
Harris was talking after the result of the ballot, organised by the Garda Representative Association (GRA), was announced. On a huge turnout of 84.5%, 9,013 members voted no confidence in the commissioner. That represented 98.7% of votes cast. Just 116 gardai gave a nod to the boss. The result points to a near unanimous view by rank-and-file members that commissioner Harris is not the man for the job.
It was all so different five years ago when the former senior RUC officer took up the role. Harris was appointed to oversee a major programme of reform. It came in the wake of the Maurice McCabe case, in which the garda sergeant exposed various strands of malpractice and was targeted for opprobrium and worse.
As put by Supreme Court judge Peter Charleton in the ensuring tribunal, he was the victim of “calumny” from within. That was just the latest of a chain of scandals going back to the early 1970s.
For a long time the attitude of successive governments to garda scandals was to look the other way. The fall-out from that was a sense of impunity among elements of the force. In such a milieu, scandals were inevitable and culminated with the McCabe case and major political fall-out.
Only then did a government resolve to take decisive action. A commission on the future of policing was established and duly produced a blueprint on the way forward. The government decided that an outsider would be the best option to lead in light of all that had gone down.
Enter Drew Harris in September 2018, mad for road. And while there was trepidation in some quarters of An Garda Siochana about what the future would hold, many, particularly younger members, welcomed the prospect of working in a fully professionalized organization.
The vote during the week suggests that things haven’t turned out as planned. Holding such a ballot was unprecedented. What next?
If Defence Forces personnel are cheesed off, maybe they will have a vote on the performance of the chief of staff. Will nurses be balloted to vote confidence in the CEO of the HSE? Perhaps teachers unions’ might deign to have a confidence vote in Norma Foley, the Minister for Education. Would, in any of those instances, the top person get the nod from a majority of those polled?
The first thing to note on the ballot is the politics within the GRA. Currently, there is a ratification process ongoing for the new secretary general. The Central Executive Committee, from which the idea of a vote is understood to have emerged, have in recent weeks approved the preferred candidate. Now a special delegate conference must do likewise. It is noteworthy that an unprecedented flexing of muscles has taken place while this process is ongoing.
The biggest beef the GRA’s members have is with the plan to resort to a working roster that had been agreed before the pandemic. During covid, the force was operating on four 12-hour shifts rather than the six eight-hour shifts, the latter of which had been piloted in 2019. Now that the pandemic has passed Harris wants to revert.
The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors has accepted this but the GRA has not. There are arguments to be made for either roster, but the GRA can’t say that this is a new measure as it had already been agreed. Which roster would provide a better outcome for the public? Quite obviously, Harris believes that the original one would and it is with him the buck stops.
However, if the roster was the only beef it is highly unlikely there would have been any vote of confidence. Swirling around it are a multitude of small grievances, which collectively act to heighten anger and exercise a downward push on morale.
At issue is the style, pace and cultural currents that inform Harris’s approach to implementing reform. Sources suggest that he is not somebody to talk or listen to an extent that is considered integral to progressive management, particularly when coming into an organization from the outside.
The pace at which he is pushing reform is perfectly acceptable on one level but there are questions over whether he has access to proper resources in areas like IT. A constant refrain among gardaí today is the amount of time given over to paperwork.
Accountability is key to reform within An Garda Siochana, but Harris’s approach here has also raised questions.
For instance, over 100 gardai are currently suspended, far more than ever was the case before.
Some of these are for suspected crimes in areas like domestic abuse that previously might not have attracted suspension at an early stage. That is a progressive change. But other instances where the ‘suspend now and ask questions later’ approach is being deployed are not as straightforward.
In the context of a much greater number of suspensions a really serious issue is the length of time that investigations into alleged malpractice take, with some members suspended for years without an outcome. Allied to that is a belief among rank-and-file that senior officers are not being subjected to the same high level of accountability.
All of that adds to ripples of resentment and fear and impacts morale way beyond the individuals who are directly affected. One example that includes all these aspects is the suspensions in the traffic corps of the Limerick division, which have been covered on these pages over the last few years.
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In the round, these and other issues are feeding into the storm of unhappiness among the ranks. In such a milieu, it was inevitable that the vote of confidence would go the way it did. Whether conducting the ballot was the correct thing to do is another matter.
For now, Harris is safe. The Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, and the Taoiseach have expressed full confidence in him. They couldn’t do otherwise. If Drew Harris doesn’t work out, an unseemly vista opens up for politicians.
One of Harris’s main attractions was he was an outsider, a fresh broom. Would they go for a second outsider and what might that do for morale in the senior ranks? Or would they go for a senior garda, despite a quite obvious belief five years ago that proper reform required somebody who didn’t have a track record in the force?
Ultimately, he will be judged on his tenure when he finishes up in the job. His current contract is due to expire in two years time. To be fair to him, he’s entitled to that long view rather than be subjected to a vote of confidence that has set a very strange precedent.
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