Leo sharpens axe for Nóirín
Jobstown statement ‘an effort to distance himself ’
LEO Varadkar is preparing to move against Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan if any new development emerges from the myriad of scandals she is involved in.
Ministers said this weekend that the Taoiseach’s controversial comments about the Jobstown trial were an effort to distance himself from Ms O’Sullivan.
The Irish Mail on Sunday has also learned that ministers are discussing new proposals for yet another layer of bureaucracy over the Commissioner.
Some ministers say a three-person commission should be appointed to oversee Garda management. The Police Authority head, Josephine Feehily, would sit on in and it would
A new commission to oversee the gardaí
report to the Justice Minister.
Meanwhile, it is understood that the Public Accounts Committee will this week publish a report that will criticise the Commissioner over her role in the Templemore Garda College affair. The College has been accused, by auditors and civilian administrators in the Garda, of operating a slush fund and rampant financial mismanagement.
Ms O’Sullivan was contradicted by other senior Garda members at public hearings.
Mr Varadkar, in an RTÉ Prime Time interview last week, discussed the trail of the six anti-water charges protesters who had been accused of false imprisonment of former tánaiste Joan Burton and her assistant in Jobstown in 2014.
They were acquitted and there has been criticism of the Garda evidence at the trial.
There has also been criticism of the decision to bring charges of false imprisonment, which carries a life sentence.
‘We need to be able to trust that when the Gardaí stand up in court and they say something happened that it did happen and it shouldn’t conflict with video evidence and if it does then that is a problem,’ Mr Varadkar said. The Taoiseach also told Prime Time that he would be ‘very concerned if it’s the case that we would ever have gardaí on a stand in the court giving evidence that is not in line with the facts’. He said it was something that needed to be looked at by the commissioner and Garda management.
However, his comments were heavily criticised by Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin, who called them ‘ill-judged’ and ‘not fair’.
He added that they had set a ‘dangerous precedent’.
It was reported yesterday that officials from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions were ‘extremely concerned’ about the potential impact of the Taoiseach’s comments on ongoing criminal trials of others charged with offences at Jobstown. The comments gave a fillip to Solidarity and Sinn Féin TDs, who are continuing to call for a public inquiry into the case, leading some political observers to describe the Taoiseach’s intervention as a mistake.
But reacting to the comments yesterday, one minister said that the Cabinet was looking at them in a different context.
‘He was making sure the gardaí understand that there is a different sheriff in town on this one. The one thing that isn’t going to continue is the Government link to the failures with the gardaí. The new Taoiseach is not going to say it’s okay to be bad at your job and that we are going to tolerate it,’ said the minister.
‘It’s one failure after another. Any more errors from the gardaí are not going to be dealt with the way Enda and Frances dealt with it,’ said a Government source.
The Irish Mail on Sunday last
week reported that the previous Cabinet discussed sacking the Commissioner but were advised against it by Michael Noonan, who cautioned that a Supreme Court ruling – as had been previously done – could result from any precipitous action.
Ministers loyal to Mr Varadkar say he will take decisive action against the Commissioner, who has been mired in controversy for over a year. ‘He can sack her with the backing of the Cabinet but we all see the difficulties around such a move,’ said a source close to the Taoiseach. ‘The problem you have is, if you sack her, who do you replace her with? What it needs now is three independent, objective people who have knowledge and experience. ‘And that isn’t in the guards at the moment.They may put three people above her.’
This commission will manage the gardaí, Cabinet sources believe. Ministers suggested the head of the Garda Authority, Ms Feehily, to sit on the commission so her organisation would play a role in the management of the force.
In a statement, Solidarity TD Paul Murphy, one of those who was on trial over Jobstown, said the Taoiseach’s admission that the evidence from some gardaí was contradictory to the video evidence ‘reaffirms the need for an independent public inquiry’.
However, the Government is under pressure because Mr Martin criticised Mr Varadkar’s statement, as did the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Government sources argued last night that Mr Varadkar’s statement on Jobstown was carefully thought out and not the mistake that the Fianna Fáil leader has made it out to be in his media comments.
‘I think it is very clever what he has done,’ said a senior source. ‘He has putclear blue water between Garda failures and Garda mismanagement and the Government.’
‘I think it is very clever what he has done’