They want to take out Noirin O’Sullivan and will stop at nothing

Garda Commissioner is in the firing line but her management style isn’t helping the situation, writes Kevin Doyle

THE knives are out for the Garda Commissioner and yet those wielding them are hoping Noirin O’Sullivan will fall on her own sword.

They want her gone. Ideally by way of a dishonourable discharge, but under the circumstances where the party of law-and-order Fine Gael doesn’t want to lose a second commissioner, a resignation would suffice.

A lesser woman or man would have given up long ago, having realised that they haven’t got the support to succeed in their stated aim of transforming a beleaguered and often belittled force.

But O’Sullivan is a fiercely determined officer who has faced misogyny and personality clashes from her early days as a rank-and-file, all the way through the ‘Mockies’ and even as deputy commissioner.

She once told a story of how shortly after starting in Store Street Garda Station in 1981 she was sent home for refusing to go to the Kylemore shop on Talbot Street to buy bread and ham to make sandwiches.

The ensuing row with her superintendent led her to think she would be sacked. Instead she became part of the first undercover unit to take on the capital’s rampant drug problem.

She has earned her stripes so why are her own colleagues and subordinates now out to get her?

A simple explanation for the drip, drip, drip of smear stories about the garda chief would be that she has disrupted a man’s world.

And while that’s one element of what’s going on in An Garda Siochana, insiders paint narratives that diverge in two directions but arrive at the same destination.

On one hand O’Sullivan is the victim of an old boys’ club that is trying to settle old scores.

On the other she is focused on self-preservation and missed the opportunity to offer the hand of friendship to her foes after rising to the top.

As deputy commissioner, O’Sullivan would often be subtly snubbed as ‘the lads’ went for real meetings over tea.

The mood against her intensified after she stepped into the breach created by Martin Callinan’s sudden retirement in March 2014.

She had plenty of reasons to be confident in her position. To the outside world the very idea that somebody like the mother of three could win an open competition to head up An Garda Siochana suggested that perhaps the force wasn’t as backward as feared. The media coverage of her appointment was largely flattering.

At the same time she must have known that there were enemies everywhere.

“There’s fault on both sides but she made no attempt to heal old wounds. Not once did she say, ‘Why don’t we all try to pull together?’,” said a source. Further disquiet grew internally as the new boss’s management style became evident.

Sources, even those on ‘Team Noirin’, talk about meetings not starting on time or being inexplicably cancelled, not to mention “an indecisive streak”.

Her email instructions run along the lines of “I direct you to...” It’s a tone that doesn’t fit well in a world of HR policies and mindfulness classes.

Of course, we could all find similar faults with bosses but there is also a feeling that in those early days the Commissioner “over-promised”.

There certainly hasn’t been a major transformation of An Garda Siochana and morale has sunk lower than many thought possible.

Some find that ironic because O’Sullivan is seen as being very “pro garda”, to the point where civilian staff feel left out in the cold.

Key administration positions that traditionally went to civilians have been taken over by high-ranking officers instead.

“The Commissioner has talked about serious gaps on the operations side but then puts experienced gardai in admin roles. She wants people close to her that she knows and trusts,” said a source.

There is evidence to back up those gripes but as tends to happen the legend grew.

The story of her bridesmaid being promoted swirled round Leinster House but proved to be bogus. She didn’t even have a bridesmaid.

There has been much chatter too about her husband, Jim McGowan, who was promoted to Chief Superintendent rank last May. He was appointed to investigate the former head of the Garda Press Office during the Callinan era, Dave Taylor, for allegedly leaking information to the media.

That raised eyebrows in both garda and media circles.

The logic of making an example of Taylor is hard to fathom but one source suggests it was “driven by paranoia and an attempt to stamp out interaction between gardai and journalists”.

Then there was the list of controversies that found their way into the newspapers or RTE through either the normal course of events or carefully crafted leaks. Some of what has been written has been skewed. But the mitigating circumstances are limited.

In April 2015, O’Sullivan sanctioned a letter which appeared to rubbish a report in this newspaper by Jim Cusack about the existence of the IRA. She later had to publicly back away from its suggestion that the IRA had gone away, but not before Sinn Fein has exploited it for their own political means.

Last May, the fallout from the O’Higgins Report almost proved fatal as reports emerged that O’Sullivan had ordered her legal team to allege ‘malice’ on the part of the whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

“Only Fianna Fail saved her at that stage,” said a source, pointing out that Micheal Martin’s party didn’t join the resignation chorus.

There were also the controversies over resources for dealing with the Hutch/Kinahan feud, crime statistics being wrongly recorded, a trip to San Diego in the build-up to a strike and in the past fortnight alone rows over appointments and her Hillary Clinton-esque use of Gmail.

Her relationship with Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald has soured, with observers who saw the pair at a graduation ceremony describing the body-language as “pointed”. Things are worse with Josephine Feehily, the head of the Policing Authority.

There’s no sign O’Sullivan is looking for a way out. Instead the boys with the knives will continue to hunt her down while those backing O’Sullivan wonder what scandal is coming next and whether it will topple her.

‘There is no sign that O’Sullivan is looking for a way out’