Public confidence and trust in Garda is biggest challenge facing the force

SOMEWHERE along the line, An Garda Siochana must have fallen through the looking glass in Alice in Wonderland. It is either that, or we the public have fallen through that same looking glass.

Certainly we are looking through some sort of prism of fantasy at the events which dog the institution.

The latest events from late last week, the wrongful conviction of 15,000 motorists for traffic offences and the revelation of one million phantom breath tests border on the ridiculous and suggest a body with serious structural and command issues.

Public confidence in the Gardai is shot. The culmative effects of all the problems are that serious.

While Gardai recorded 1,995,369 breath tests between 2011 and 2015, the Medical Bureau of Road Safety logged only 1,058,157 single-use breathalyser devices. In the Cork/Kerry region alone, for every 100 kits the gardai were issued, they managed to conduct 117 breath tests.

Gardai boasted of nearly one million breath tests that never took place. They released statistics on driver habits, on their level of patrols and checkpoints and on their level of detection which were all fantasy.

We need to know why and how this has come about?

Is it rouge, lazy gardai in stations filling in paper work for work not carried out. If that was the case, and I don’t really don’t believe that it could be the case, it would have to be a practice on an industrial scale, repeated in stations throughout the country given that we are talking about 937,212 phantom breath tests over the period, or 187,442 per annum, which is 513 phantom tests per day for five years, or nearly 20 phantom breath tests for each of the twenty six counties for every day over five years.

Such numbers would leave you to conclude that it was not a cohort of rouge, lazy gardai who were submitting false reports on a daily basis, but rather would suggest that there are systemic failures within the organisation.

Was the false reporting deliberate policy and if so, who was responsible and who failed to detect the practice? Alternatively was the false reporting a breakdown of their procedures and systems and again who was responsible for oversight and failed to detect the issue?

For five years the public were supplied false information on drink driving detections and the level of enforcement carried out An Garda Siochana.

The public must trust An Garda Siochana completely, they police by consent, but they are in a position of immense trust and power in our society and recently in this case and other issues such as the McCabe case, they have fallen well short of the standard that they themselves should set. They have let the public down.

The statements thus far provided by the Garda Commissioner fall short of what is required.

The public must get clear, concise explanations of what happened, how it happened and who was responsible. This is not be a complex matter. The answers lie within the organisation, within their corporate structure and the command structures of the force and frankly the answers should be to hand within a very tight timeline.

If someone cannot count or use a calculator or spreadsheet let’s get it out there, however embarrassing that may well be. Better that explanation than some of the other possible reasons.

There are more serious issues of concern related to the Gardai and the way in which Sergeant McCabe was allegedly treated by senior management of the force and the facts related to that will emerge in due course during the tribunal of enquiry.

The issue of these phantom breath tests however is a basic, fundamental breakdown of public confidence in the Gardai and the way they go about policing.

This was not the first time the Gardai have been found to have released incorrect statistics to the general public.

These problems are causing a drip, drip, drip erosion of Garda authority and public confidence in the Gardai and cannot continue, but change for change’s sake should not be the knee jerk reaction.

Commissioner O’Sullivan’s tenure must be under severe doubt, but a change of leadership at the top will not be the solution, real reform and a complete cultural change in garda management is the only way forward.