Senior Garda officers criticised over disciplinary measures

Senior Garda officers must take greater responsibility for dealing with disciplinary problems in the force, rather than leaving them to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc), the head of the policing watchdog has said.

In a criticism of the performance of middle-ranking and senior Garda officers, Judge Mary Ellen Ring called for the legislation that set up Gsoc a decade ago to be reviewed.

Ms Ring said “the first responsibility for bringing [gardaí] back into line” lay with their Garda officer managers and not the watchdog.

“Gsoc should not be doing the work of the Garda. It is time for the senior ranks in particular to step forward and [ask] are we dealing with discipline in a real way,” she told the Association of Garda Superintendents.

A tenth of all of the complaints – 1,300 in all – made to the ombudsman concern allegations that officers have been discourteous to people. Such behaviour should be eradicated, Ms Ring said.

“There should be no complaints of discourtesy in 2016, never mind 9 per cent or so,” she said, noting the 1,300 admissible complaints Gsoc received each year.

“What is wrong with stepping up and saying: ‘I am sorry you appear to have had a bad encounter and here is what I am going to do’?” she told the association’s annual conference in Naas, Co Kildare.

Complaint

If a customer in a shop made a complaint about a bad experience they would expect it to be acknowledged courteously, investigated and dealt with. “Isn’t it time for the same expectation to apply to the gardaí?” she asked.

However, the legislation that set up Gsoc should be changed to protect gardaí, too, since it was proving almost impossible to prosecute complainants who made vexatious allegations.

“There needs to be a greater recognition of the public service element of the Garda. The Morris tribunal into allegations of Garda wrongdoing had opened “a truck-load of cans of worms”. There was no going back from that point.

“Have we allowed by legislation or otherwise our responsibility in discipline to be taken from us? Do our own structures encourage discipline?”