Since Flann’s time, the gardaí have been deft at the dark arts... but reform is needed now more than ever
THEY say every family is dysfunctional in its own way. And this is certainly true of An Garda Síochána, where the abject failure to bring more civilians into the force is just the latest in a long blue line of dysfunctionality.
The Policing Authority had given Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan the target of getting 1,500 gardaí out of administration and back on the beat.
The case for doing this is overwhelming. Not only would it improve policing, it would save the State a fortune. Civilians get paid far less than the gardaí they replace and don’t lumber the State with pensions – worth up to €1.8million.
It seems crazy that we’re using highly paid and well-trained gardaí as clerks – and then paying a fortune to retire them at a relatively young age as if they were burnt out from constantly battling criminals instead of typing up reports.
Yet in the past ten years, the percentage of civilians employed in the gardaí has increased from 11% to just 13% – compared with an international norm of 2030%, a new report from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform shows. The report suggests that the ‘slow’ pace of civilianisation undermines other priorities such as recruitment and stepping up policing services where they are needed.
‘While additional investment may be forthcoming, subject to affordability constraints, it must be linked to demonstrated reforms,’ the Public Expenditure department’s report warns.
Last month, the Policing Authority also vented its frustration at this lack of progress towards civilianisation and seemed to suggest that the force was surreptitiously fighting tooth and nail to subvert Government policy and international best practice.
The Public Expenditure department report highlighted that moving to civilianisation could save €45million and provide 2.5million additional garda hours for frontline duties. The failure to do so is just the tip of the dysfunctionality iceberg in the gardaí.
Our police force should be squeaky clean, yet it has been rocked by a spate of controversies. The ongoing sagas of whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe, and Commissioner O’Sullivan were followed by financial irregularities at Templemore and the distortions of murder statistics. We’ve had abuses of the penalty-points system and nearly a million ‘phantom’ breath tests.
Two investigations are under way into An Garda Síochána. There’s a lot to investigate. Some of it is common to police forces everywhere. The claims of bullying and branding of whistleblower Sgt McCabe as a ‘rat’ mirrors a plot from New York-based cop show Blue Bloods. Other elements are peculiarly Irish. Recent revelations give the impression that the gardaí inhabit a bureaucracydriven dark and surreal world of their own where they devote themselves to pursuing peculiar obsessions and deeply resent outside interference (especially when it comes from the Government).
If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s the premise of a book written by Flann O’Brien in 1940 – The Third Policeman. In it, the nameless narrator finds himself in a rural police station run by bicycle-obsessed Sergeant Pluck. The narrator did commit a murder but he is accused of it solely because he happens to be present in the station and is therefore the most convenient suspect. Wise to the ways of the policeman’s mind at this stage, he argues that as he has no name, he therefore cannot be charged.
Sgt Pluck, a stickler for bureaucracy, is stumped – but only temporarily – before he triumphantly declares that the narrator, as a non-person, can be hanged anyway without fear of repercussions.
Crisis
The tale is bookended with Sgt Pluck’s catchphrase: ‘Is it about a bicycle?’, as the narrator returns to the police station again in a never-ending nightmarish loop. As also do attempts to reform the guards and indeed the entire public sector.
In the depths of the State’s financial crisis, a determined effort was made to reform a system of allowances across the public sector that cost the taxpayer around €1billion a year.
This urgent need was one reason behind the creation of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
Yet six years on from the crisis, hardly any allowances have been done away with as the public sector put up a ferocious rearguard action to defend them.
But the gardaí are in a league of their own when it comes to the dark arts of dreaming up and claiming allowances.
They must also spend an inordinate amount of time boning up on and filling out forms to claim sometimes more than 100 tax-free allowances. In a twist Flann O’Brien would be proud of, these include allowances to compensate for no longer getting other allowances. And, yes, of course, there is also a bicycle allowance which, at the last count, was claimed by 70 gardaí.
The spirit of Sergeant Pluck is also present in Garda manipulation of crime statistics – and the disproportionate targeting of easy prey among certain sectors of the population. Policing our roads is vitally important, but gardaí shouldn’t rely on the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of motorists per year as proof of crime-busting ‘success’.
Youngsters busted for carrying small quantities of drugs also feature prominently. They are believed to account for the bulk of the recorded 16,000 drug offences a year. This has led to a huge number of people – estimated at over 150,000 – who acquire a criminal drugs conviction early in life, causing untold difficulties if they travel abroad.
This anomaly – making us seem a nation of drug abusers – seems to be behind recent efforts to reform drug laws and reduce minor-level convictions.
Meanwhile, clamping down on fraud, corruption and white-collar crime would be beneficial to us all both financially and socially. Yet it goes largely unpunished.
Rampant motor insurance fraud is reckoned to add €50 to every premium. Every week we read about compensation cases thrown out of court because they seem to be blatantly fraudulent. Yet hardly ever do we read about follow-up cases bringing the would-be fraudsters to justice.
Fraud and deception-related offences accounted for 4,900 recorded crime offences last year, a tiny fraction of the overall total, which compares with 1.8million in the UK. The DPP’s annual report shows less than 50 cases of fraud went through the Circuit Court in its last published year (2014).
Failure to police corruption cost us half a billion spent on lawyers in toothless tribunals, while the Ansbacher offshore accounts and Anglo Irish Bank controversies came to naught.
It is estimated that smuggling costs us €580million in lost excise revenue, due in no small way to illegal cigarettes that are sold openly on the streets of the capital. This is even cited as a reason for not hiking tax on cigarettes when we badly need the revenue and the health lobby is screaming for such measures. Nobody asks: why not get the gardaí to do their job and clamp down on illegal vendors?
This is not all the fault of the gardaí. The Government should manage the force properly and direct resources where they are needed, such as into woefully underfunded fraud investigations.
The challenge is massive and it seems reform will be resisted every step of the way. But one thing is clear: the broom of change needs to be wielded by someone from outside the force who, unlike Noírín O’Sullivan, is not steeped in the dysfunctional culture they are trying to reform.