Grabbing ill-gotten gains a joy: Garda boss

NEW Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has hailed the force’s recent success in seizing assets from criminals.

He said: ‘If there is one thing better than locking criminals up, it is taking their ill-gotten gains from them.’

Appearing before the Policing Authority yesterday, he said the Garda had thwarted 50 assassination attempts and had targeted the lavish lifestyles of a number of gangland figures. And he described the investigation that led to last month’s murder conviction of Freddie Thompson as ‘world class’.

Mr Harris repeated his concerns about the style and manner in which gardaí had policed the recent eviction of activists from a house they had occupied in central Dublin by a private firm.

He said gardaí had been placed in a very difficult position in what was a ‘very emotive’ issue.

Mr Harris said: ‘Certainly there were issues about our appearance and the style and the manner in which we went about it which were of concern to me.’

The Commissioner had admitted previously that some mistakes were made when gardaí attended a property on Dublin’s North Frederick Street earlier this month during the eviction of housing protesters.

The incident sparked criticism after the gardaí and security workers wore either balaclavas or ski masks, and a number of protesters subsequently claimed they were injured in the eviction and subsequent sit-down protest.

The demonstrators had taken over the property as well as a second home in Dublin’s Summerhill Parade over the summer to protest at the housing crisis.

Mr Harris told the authority he had received a report on the incident on Wednesday but had not yet had time to ‘digest’ it.

Separately, The Policing Authority raised concerns over proposals by the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland to overhaul the oversight of the force.

Under the recommendations, the power of The Policing Authority and the Garda Síochána Inspectorate would be reduced and superseded by a new organisation called the Policing and Community Safety Oversight Commission (PCSOC).

However, The Policing Authority said that it was its view, which was shared by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Equality, that there should be a ‘single pair of eyes’ on Garda performance in order to avoid oversight gaps.

Authority chairman Josephine Feehily said that it was somewhat ‘surprising’ that the commission’s report proposed two further layers of oversight and that it would be interested in hearing how this might work.

She said that the members of the authority ‘have no skin in the game’ because every one of them is serving a term that will expire close to or within the time frame of the implementation of these changes.

Targeted lavish lifestyles