NOIRIN QUITS
After countless controversies and continuous calls for her dismissal, Nóirín O’Sullivan finally steps down as Garda Commissioner ... with a nice big lump sum and a seriously hefty pension of course
NÓIRÍN O’Sullivan’s controversial reign at the helm of the Garda came to an end last night when she suddenly retired.
It is understood the Garda Commissioner will receive a golden handshake which could be worth almost €270,000, and an annual pension worth almost €90,000 for the rest of her life.
Senior sources have told the Irish Daily Mail that she had considered quitting during her recent lengthy holiday, which spanned up to five weeks, and decided enough was enough. She could no longer face a barrage of questions over scandals from the media, at a number of scheduled upcoming public events, including the Ploughing Championships next week, insiders said.
She had a ‘long period of reflection over her extended holiday leave and decided this no longer worth the hassle’, a source said.
Ms O’Sullivan was appointed Commissioner in November 2014, after several months as Interim Commissioner when Martin Callinan quit. If she had stayed on until November – which would have marked three years in the role – she may have walked away with almost €300,000, which would have included allowances, as she would have been entitled to a lump sum worth 150% of her final salary, as well as a pension of 50% of her salary. She currently gets a salary of about €180,000 a year.
The sum she will get is calculated on a pro rata basis, so it is understood she will get a lump sum of ‘less that €270,000’ and a pension worth just under €90,000 a year.
Gardaí can retire once they have reached 50 years of age and have at least 30 years service.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar led the tributes to Ms O’Sullivan’s career, saying he wanted to ‘thank her for that on behalf of the Government and the Irish people’.
He said: ‘She has overseen many significant developments in often challenging circumstances and in recent years, took on the challenge of reforming the gardaí.
‘As she said in her statement, her decision to retire is made in the best interests of An Garda Síochána and ensuring that it can focus on the extensive programme of reform that is now underway.’
Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan welcomed the move last night and said it ‘paves the way for a new chapter for an Garda Síochána’ – but he added: ‘I would like to thank Nóirín O’Sullivan for her many years of public service and wish her well in her retirement. Her resignation means there has been some accountability within An Garda Síochána for the 1.5million false breath tests recorded on the Garda Pulse system.’
He added: ‘The new Commissioner must be given the support and resources to ensure that all of the reforms needed can be implemented so that every officer can undertake their duties, and that confidence across all sections of An Garda Síochána is restored’.
Minister Flanagan thanked her for her 36 years of service and said Deputy Commissioner Donall O’Cualáin would take over as Acting Commissioner from midnight last night.
It has been widely speculated that an outsider will be appointed to the permanent post in a bid to clean up the tarnished image of the force, in which public confidence levels are at a low.
One senior source said: ‘It’s hard to know what garda will want this job.’ It is ‘a poisoned chalice’.
Her resignation appears to have caught the Government and her colleagues on the hop. But now, they are likely to look abroad for a Garda chief for the first time in the history of the State.
Garda HR chief John Barrett is expected to play a leading role in drawing up a short list of names.
Mr Barrett recently showed that he wasn’t willing to toe the line, while giving evidence before a Dáil committee on the mismanagement of funds at Templemore Garda Training College.
After losing two commissioners in quick succession the Government will be determined to appoint somebody who has no connection to scandals engulfing the force.
However, officers who have not been part of the O’Sullivan or Callinan’s inner circles will be considered. It is expected that Mr Barrett will approach a number of people who have served with distinction abroad. Senior officers in the PSNI may also be considered.
The shock resignation comes after a string of controversies including the fake breath test scandal. However, Ms O’Sullivan took a swipe at the media yesterday as her statement referred to dealing with ‘inaccurate commentary’. She said she notified Mr Varadkar and Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan of her decision yesterday afternoon and insisted that, despite the scandals that have dogged her, she was not pushed to leave the role.
She insisted she was resigning because too much of her time was taken up with ‘an unending cycle of requests, questions, instructions and public hearings’. She said: ‘The support for me to continue in the role is evident. However, I devoted much of my summer break to considering if continuing would be the right thing to do.
‘It has become clear, over the last year, that the core of my job is now about responding to an unending cycle of requests, questions, instructions and public hearings involving various agencies including the Public Accounts Committee, the Justice and Equality Committee, the Policing Authority, and various other inquiries, and dealing with inaccurate commentary surrounding all of these matters.
‘They are all part of a new – and necessary – system of public accountability.
‘But when a Commissioner is trying – as I’ve been trying – to implement the deep cultural and structural reform that is necessary
It is a ‘poisoned chalice’ Likely to look abroad for new chief
to modernise and reform an organisation of 16,000 people and rectify the failures and mistakes of the past, the difficulty is that the vast majority of her time goes, not to implementing the necessary reforms and meeting the obvious policing and security challenges, but to dealing with this unending cycle.’ It had been rumoured that Ms O’Sullivan was considering a role with EU law enforcement agency Europol, and in her official statement yesterday she said that she had been encouraged to apply for the top job with the international force by colleagues abroad, and agreed to consider it, but did not proceed with the application. She said: ‘I may decide to take on some other interesting and exciting challenge down the line.’
She added that she plans to retire, spend time with her family and adjust to the next phase of her life.
Ms O’Sullivan also sent an internal message via the Garda portal thanking gardaí for their service. She said: ‘Being a Guard is the best job in the world. You’re committed to the public good. You’re encountering people at the lowest points in their lives. You can make a difference. As long as you avoid cynicism, you can make a profound difference – for the better – in other people’s lives.’
Minister Flanagan thanked her for her 36 years of service and said Deputy Commissioner O’Cualáin would take over as Acting Commissioner from midnight last night.
He said: ‘I want to acknowledge that, during Commissioner O’Sullivan’s tenure, she was faced with particularly significant difficulties, many of which had built up over several decades.’
Comment – Page 12
IN the end, Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan’s resignation was as welcome as it was sudden.
Engulfed by relentless controversy, dogged by inquiries from the Disclosures Tribunal, chaired by Peter Charleton, to the PAC’s investigation into financial mismanagement at Templemore Garda Training College, and frequently the target of widespread criticism, O’Sullivan’s tenure in the top job was turbulent and contentious from the beginning.
The fierce opposition to her appointment, not to mention the unending stream of Garda scandals, meant any attempts she made to shore up public confidence in An Garda Síochána or repair the damage created by former Commissioner Martin Callinan’s forced retirement in the wake of the penalty points fiasco and the whistleblower affair were doomed to fail.
If anything, problems in the police force festered under Nóirín O’Sullivan’s watch and public confidence toppled further.
She was regarded as embedded too deeply in the old regime of Garda mismanagement to usher in the radical changes that are needed in a modern police force.
Her sitting beside former Commissioner Martin Callinan during an Oireachtas hearing while he condemned the actions of whistleblowers as ‘disgusting’ was something she never really recovered from.
Controversies concerning falsified Garda breath tests, wrongful motor convictions, ill-treatment of Garda whistleblowers gathered momentum rather than faded when she was in charge.
She could not always deny responsibility for failings or hint they were legacy issues. The PAC said information she gave to the Comptroller and Auditor General about financial irregularities in Templemore was ‘not accurate …and not acceptable’.
It also criticised Nóirín O’Sullivan for not reporting the Templemore issue to the watchdog as soon as she learned of it.
The escalation of the breath-test scandal, revealing that gardaí entered some 1.5million invented breath tests into their Pulse computer system (a practice that continued during her watch) appeared to make her position untenable. It forced louder cries from across all Opposition parties that she be removed, although the Taoiseach stood firmly in her corner.
In another time, Nóirín O’Sullivan whose steely command and cool composure under fire impressed some of her most ardent critics, might have justified the high hopes invested in her when she made history in 2014 as the country’s first female Garda Commissioner.
She was a victim both of unfortunate timing and the legacy created by decades of Garda mismanagement and dysfunctional leadership. Despite best intentions, her closeness to former Commissioner Martin Callinan meant she could never undo the suspicion of complicity in sins of the past.
Her resignation offers the Government and the Policing Authority the opportunity to find a replacement untainted by past scandals or compromised by controversies – a figure free to take on the challenge of creating a modern and accountable police force of 16,000 people.
The suggestion that this fresh pair of hands may be a civilian or a figure from another jurisdiction is promising. In a small society an outsider’s objectivity and readiness to tackle vested interests, without fear or favour, can be invaluable.
We do not have to look further than the appointment of Matthew Elderfield to the Central Bank during the banking crisis and his success restoring confidence in the Financial Regulator to see the evidence.
The answer to the Garda Síochána crisis may lie abroad. There is little hope the force’s morale will be rebuilt or its reputation recover if the next Commissioner is drawn from the same pool that produced Nóirín O’Sullivan.