McEntee can’t wish away this Garda crisis by ignoring it
GARDA Commissioner Drew Harris has described this week’s almost unanimous rank-and-file vote of no confidence in him as a ‘kick in the teeth’. Yet astonishingly, in the very same breath, he insisted there was no crisis in the force. Now, call me old-fashioned but, in my world, a kick in the teeth is a fairly substantial full-blown crisis. But on Planet Harris, it’s apparently just a mild inconvenience, an offence you’d hardly even report to the local cop shop. Nothing to see here.
In the name of goodness, is it any wonder policing in this country is in such a terrible mess when even the Garda Commissioner refuses to recognise this week’s historic Kim Jong Un-style condemnation vote of him for what it actually is – an organisational and human resources emergency, a goddamn crisis?
JUSTICE Minister Helen McEntee had the same air of nonchalance as the besieged Garda Commissioner. But, given her appalling record in Government, particularly her fully detached relationship with what is actually happening on our streets (such as open drug dealing and the knocking of all colours out of tourists and locals alike in Dublin city centre by well-known gangs of marauding thugs), we could hardly have expected even an ‘oh my god, that’s terrible altogether’.
There’s a whole tsunami of grief inundating the gardaí right now, the result of a series of moralesapping disasters in recent years. These have included the scandal of thousands of 999 calls that simply went unanswered, even from women threatened with physical violence or worse in their homes; the mass cancellation by gardaí of tens of thousands of fixed penalty charges; the makey-uppy recording of up to 1.45 million driver breath tests; allegations of financial hugger-mugger at the Templemore Training College; the under-reporting of homicides; the suspension of the Garda’s civilian director of human resources John Barrett five years ago; and the infamous blackguarding of Maurice McCabe.
And then there’s GSOC, that under-funded, under-appreciated
Garda watchdog that most gardaí dread and some absolutely hate because of what they believe is the entirely unfair way many of their colleagues have been treated after complaints against them.
Rank-and-file gardaí are also convinced that management treats them differently to more senior officers when it comes to suspensions after complaints or internal investigations. While about 70 regular gardaí are currently suspended, insiders point to at least two cases where more senior members of the force are still on duty despite serious allegations against them.
ONE senior garda is suspected of perverting the course of justice arising from alleged money laundering by a family member that may involve the Kinahan drugs cartel. Another senior garda is suspected of assault. No suspensions there, at least not yet.
The commissioner’s insistence that gardaí must return to the old six-days-on, four-days-off roster is the final straw for the rank and file in the force.
The current roster, introduced in 2020 to cope with Covid, is a fourdays-on, four-days-off routine, one that members prefer because of the greater certainty and better life-work balance it provides. Further, this is the only roster familiar to gardaí who have joined the service in the past three years.
Ms McEntee is correct when she says that the GRA vote of no confidence in Harris was ‘personal’. But the big question she should be asking her many advisers, Government colleagues and political supporters is why.
Why, after all these years since the Garda’s formation in 1922, have ordinary members of our police service suddenly decided to ditch precedent and press the nuclear button with this vote of no confidence? Is it really only about a return to the old roster? Really?
You don’t have to be an organisation guru to realise that our police service is in rag order. And neither Drew Harris nor Helen McEntee have any credibility as witnesses by denying the crisis that the rest of us can easily identify.
So what’s to be done now? In the short term, some compromise has to be hammered out. The most likely would be a kind of hybrid roster system in which core gardaí, those on the beat for example, would be allowed to retain the current system while others such as detective units might have to revert to the old roster.
Regrettably, however, even if that compromise is achieved, the real, underlying, morale-draining resentments will still remain. And this crisis will continue until people like Helen McEntee call it out – and give it its proper name.