A regulatory system that’s bound to fail
AN GARDA Síochána operates under layer after layer of scrutiny. Superficially, that might seem like a good thing. In fact, it is all part of a conspiracy of neglect engineered to keep the force under political control.
How? Well, the Policing Authority is answerable to an Oireachtas committee. The Garda Inspectorate is a division of the Department of Justice. The entire department is answerable to the justice minister, who is answerable to the Taoiseach. And the ‘independent’ Garda Ombudsman is answerable to the justice minister and to the Dáil.
This structure is designed to ensure that all policing remains under the control of politicians, many of whom like to grandstand when grilling a senior officer.
Newly retired commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan might have got many things wrong, but she never spoke a truer word than when complaining about just how much of her time was taken up with Dáil committees and other oversight bodies.
It’s not just the eight hours a day she was testifying, but all the preparation that had to go into her submissions. When she delivered submissions, it was often to politicians with no experience of security matters but plenty of experience in getting their faces on the TV news.
By making the Oireachtas the ultimate scrutineer, the system is designed to fail. That is why we urgently need a new body with powers and resources similar to those of the FBI. If we had such an organisation, it could have examined the financial chicanery at the Garda College in Templemore with the aid of forensic accountants and, if it had the sort of powers granted to the Revenue, it could have made the rules simple. If what a witness testified to was incorrect, a lie, or confirmation of fraudulent behaviour, then he or she would go to prison, full stop.
There is a reason why everyone is terrified of Revenue: because of the powers it has to seize everything you earn or own. That, too, is why the Criminal Assets Bureau was so successful in dismantling the apparatus or organised crime.
That shows we can change the system if the will is there, as it surely must be under Fine Gael, the self-proclaimed party of law and order. The Taoiseach weighed in this week on the breath-test controversy and promised that any garda of any rank who falsified data would face censure.
If he truly wanted to see genuine reform, he would remove the many layers of oversight, consolidate their functions into one independent super-authority, and remove politicians completely from what they are patently unqualified to scrutinise.