That the Garda's head of human resources John Barrett is being referred to as a whistleblower has come as a surprise to him.
Having spent most of his working life in US multinationals he has come to the Garda late in his career. He is a civilian member of the executive at the top of the force.
It means he is not part of the Garda culture; he’s a fresh pair of eyes looking at the internal workings of the Garda through a prism of corporate best practice.
When he began asking questions about spending at the Garda College, Templemore, two years ago he realised there were serious problems about financial governance.
Serious wrongdoing
And he quickly learned two reports had been compiled on the issues. He was only in the job about nine months but he wanted answers and action over the serious wrongdoing he believed he had found.
He has said he had a meeting in Templemore in July, 2015, with Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and other senior officers. He claims it lasted over two hours and that the issues around spending at the college were ventilated.
However, his account given to the Public Accounts Committee last week, supported by notes and records he created, contradicts the account given by the commissioner of the same meeting. She says the meeting was very brief.
The discrepancies in their accounts are crucial because a commissioner is obliged under the Garda Síochána Act 2005 to inform the minister for justice of the day of matters that would undermine confidence in the force.
Mr Barrett’s account suggests Ms O’Sullivan knew the nature and extent of the problems in Templemore since at least that meeting in July, 2015. But her account suggests she knew very little and set up a working group to find out more.
When David Cullinane TD (SF) suggested at the PAC hearing that Mr Barrett had done the State some service in speaking up, he was having none of it, saying he was simply doing his job.
“I think there is a very clear role for public servants to stand up and call the truth as they find it. That’s all I did, I’m asking for no bouquets,” he replied.
Mr Barrett is not on his own in speaking up now.
Gurchand Singh, head of the Garda analysis service and Niall Kelly the head of the Garda's internal audit unit have both stepped forward to assert their positions on crucial issues.
Homicide figures
Mr Singh has made it clear to the
Policing Authority
that a report on mistakes in the homicide figures presented to the authority recently was not his work. His staff did the analysis, but the report then drawn up and presented to the authority, was not his work and had not even been read by him.
Mr Kelly, another civilian officer, told the PAC he felt duped when he had been told by senior Garda management that the problems in Templemore were being addressed. And, more recently, he has contacted the Policing Authority to distance himself from the so-called audit of breath test figures.
He has told the authority that the review, repeatedly referred to by senior Garda management as an “audit”, could not be regarded as an audit because neither he nor his staff were involved in it.
So very clearly a picture is emerging of two things; the key civilian officers at the top of the Garda being excluded from sensitive projects – in areas very damaging for the Garda – that they should be front and centre of.
And when work in those areas has been presented to the Policing Authority, they have been quick to publicly reveal their lack of involvement.
A fourth civilian figure, the Garda's head of legal services Ken Ruane, also did Ms O'Sullivan few favours at the PAC hearing.
He confirmed he discussed with Ms O’Sullivan her obligations under the Garda Síochána Act to disclose serious matters to the minister for justice when the problems in Templemore were presented by Mr Barrett as a priority.
However, just as it looked like he was about to disclose exactly what his legal advice to Ms O’Sullivan at the time was – to disclose or not to disclose to the minister – the commissioner interjected. She said she was not waving her right to privacy over legal advice she had received.
So where have these civilian officers come from all of a sudden? And why are they speaking up now?
At the time of the first reports from the Morris tribunal which inquired into complaints concerning some gardaí of the Donegal Division, over a decade ago, the need for expertise in key areas of the Garda was identified. The civilians hired into the jobs – including those that Barrett, Kelly, Ruane and Singh now fill – were intended to augment the Garda members already working in those various areas. But it appears to be from these civilian quarters that the independent voices in the Garda are now coming. There seems to be less fear of deviating from the senior management Garda line and offering a personal or independent recollection of events.
All of the civilians, of course, have worked in the private sector before taking up their roles in the Garda. It means they didn’t grow up inside the force and they also have experience of how other workplaces and organisations run.
They didn’t join the organisation through the same front door that all but a tiny number do; the Garda College in Templemore. They also have skills they can easily transfer to other organisations. To put it in the vernacular; they are not cops.
They enjoy more freedom to speak up than somebody who wears a Garda uniform, salutes their senior officers and is depending on the co-operation of their senior officers to get even basic promotions.