Garda’s HR chief ‘not consulted about Stepaside’

Sources on PAC convinced station reopening was a stroke

THE Public Accounts Committee has received information that the Garda Síochána’s head of human resources John Barrett and other senior officers were not consulted about the reopening of Stepaside Garda Station.

Sources on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that this strengthens the belief of members of the committee that the reopening of Stepaside was a ‘stroke’ agreement made between Transport Minister Shane Ross and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

It comes as the release of the interim report yesterday raised as many questions as it answered.

Stepaside Garda Station, which is in Mr Ross’s Dublin Rathdown constituency, was announced for reopening at the same June 13 Cabinet meeting that rubberstamped the appointment of ex-attorney general Máire Whelan to the bench.

Mr Ross had long campaigned for the reopening of Stepaside and opposed the appointment of Ms Whelan. That Cabinet meeting was Enda Kenny’s last in charge as taoiseach.

Crucially the O’Driscoll interim report released yesterday – the basis for which the Programme for Government was agreed in June

‘A final report will make other recommendations’

2016 – revealed that a final report could be completed by the end of June.

‘It is anticipated that a final report, which will include a recommendation with regard to other premises most suited for re-opening as Garda stations, will be submitted later in June 2017.’

Asked yesterday, neither the Department of Justice nor the Government Press Office could explain why an interim report was brought forward just weeks from when a final report could have been issued.

The Garda Press Office was unable to answer a series of questions put to it. It would not say if a final report has yet been issued, some three months after it was indicated it could be.

A Garda spokesman also could not say why five of the six regions had not had any analysis of their crime or CSO population statistics done in time for the interim report.

The only region to be so analysed was the Dublin Metropolitan Region, in which Stepaside Garda Station is located. This is important because the population data was used as the justification for the decision to recommend the reopening of Stepaside.

But in effect only four of 78 garda stations across the six Garda regions considered by Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll in the report were actually tested against the population criteria.

The crime trends actually ranked Stepaside lower than the other three stations that were considered in Dublin.

Of the four, Rush had a significant increase in population, was described as being strategically located in north Dublin, and experienced an upward crime trend in the first quarter of 2017. Stepaside is described as having the bigger population increase, but this increase is detailed imprecisely as in a range from 12% to 20%.

But what is likely to keep the heat turned up on this issue is the fact that Garda HR chief John Barrett – who previously supplied an explosive dossier of detailed notes, memos and minutes backing up his claims against Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan – is expected to be asked if he was consulted on the issue of Stepaside Garda Station.

Mr Barrett provided evidence, which was revealed in the Irish Mail on Sunday, that the embattled Garda boss was aware of issues at Templemore a full month earlier than she testified to in the PAC. The revelations about Templemore, many of which were made in this newspaper, contributed to the commissioner’s early retirement

‘The department is running scared, because it knows that he will write in and he will say as head of HR he wasn’t consulted one iota in relation to Stepaside, and that will raise a whole load of other questions,’ said a PAC source.

A senior garda told the MoS: ‘When you reopen a Garda station you don’t just open the front door and turn on the electricity. Person-

‘It’s not as simple as just opening the front door’

nel, meaning gardaí, have to be allocated to the station, rosters have to be constructed.

‘Garda cars, radios and any other logistics have to be arranged. None of this was communicated.’

Transport Minister Mr Ross has defended the Government decision to reopen Stepaside Garda Station, saying it wasn’t ‘stroke politics’ even though the station is in his own constituency. Stepaside was one of 139 stations closed as part of cuts. Ross was a vocal critic of the measure while in opposition, and ran his election campaign on the basis that he would reopen Stepaside.

His Independent Alliance colleague John Halligan previously said that Mr Varadkar had told the alliance that Fine Gael would get constituency issues ‘over the line’. Asked about that issue yesterday Junior Minister Finian McGrath broke his silence to the MoS to say he wasn’t at that meeting, but: ‘I support Shane 100% on this. He was pushing to have the station in his constituency reopened. I just think he’s entitled to do it.’

Asked about the possibility of the PAC continuing to pursue the issue, PAC vice-chairman Alan Kelly of Labour said: ‘This is an interim report, is not a final report. So why would a report done by An Garda Síochána under instruction of terms of reference by the Department of Justice be acted upon?

‘In other words, did you ever hear of the enacting of the recommendations of an interim report as opposed to a final report? What would happen, hypothetically, if the final report said, “Don’t reopen Stepaside Garda Station”?’

‘What if the final report says not to reopen it?’