How a young recruit’s refusal to make the sandwiches set her on the road to the top
THE Commissioner’s first real break came after a simple request to make sandwiches. It was the 1980s and women were largely consigned to desk duties, rarely working on the regular units.
But Noirín O’Sullivan was a highly ambitious garda recruit keen to cut her teeth doing regular police work.
One day, the young garda was called back from Dublin’s North Wall where she was walking the beat and asked to go and buy bread and make sandwiches.
Colleagues have told how her response was: ‘Absolutely no way.’ Ms O’Sullivan did not join the force to make sandwiches.
She was reported to her then superintendent in Store Street – the late, highly regarded Tommy Reilly. ‘Well, what are we going to do with you?’ he asked. ‘You can’t behave like that.’
Ms O’Sullivan was sent home for the day. She worried overnight that she might be sacked. But Supt Reilly – who later rose to the rank of assistant commissioner – was ahead of his time.
Impressed by her tenacity, he asked her about an idea she and others in the station had about going undercover to tackle the capital’s rampant drug problem.
He would later tell her repeatedly that she was going to become the first female garda commissioner.
Quite a prediction at a time when women were upstairs in Store Street Station, men were in the basement and the two were not allowed to mingle on lunch break.
This meeting with Supt Reilly paved the way for the establishment of the ‘Mockies’ (mock junkies) – a team of young, enthusiastic gardaí who worked undercover on the streets of Dublin in the early 1980s.
The successful squad was a response to a surge in heroin dealing all over the city centre.
Ms O’Sullivan joined the Garda in 1981 and immediately went to work in Store Street, a very deprived part of the city at that time. She has told colleagues she adored her work there and was inspired by the people she met. She developed a deep understanding of the community and took that with her as she rose quickly through the ranks.
‘Some of the people that really inspired her were actually drug addicts. It was a real case of people who, if they had chances, would have turned out very differently,’ said one colleague.
The numbers of women in the force at that point was minuscule. The Garda at that time was a patriarchal organisation. Women worked nine to five hours primarily and their time was employed mostly on desk duties and to search female prisoners.
The two or three female sergeants in the force at the time were put in charge of other women.
Ms O’Sullivan has told colleagues how an inspector once asked her if she wanted to go home early so she could ‘go to Mass’ the next day.
But this attitude towards women did not stop her. She sat her sergeant’s exams early in her career and, despite not being promoted for a time, went for it every year. At one point she worked alongside Frank Hand, a respected detective who shot dead by the IRA in 1984.
Ms O’Sullivan – in charge of operations since 2011 – had also been deputy commissioner of strategy and change management since that post was vacated in May.
She spent several years in the National Drug Unit where she was the operations commander. She later worked as the chief superintendent in charge of the Garda Technical Bureau.
Ms O’Sullivan was appointed assistant commissioner in 2009 and, following the appointment of Martin Callinan as commissioner, she was promoted to deputy commissioner.
Colleagues say she has an impressive record as a hardworking and extremely competent officer. They feel the emphasis on her gender is unfair. She got to where she is today, they say, on her own merit as a police officer.