Garda time spent breaking into homes to quieten rogue alarms would be better spent elsewhere, writes Noel Whelan
AFTER THE disastrous Congressional mid-term elections in 1994, then US president Bill Clinton set upon a political relaunch.
Research by the controversial political consultant Dick Morris revealed that voters did not believe Clinton's claims about his major economic and foreign policy achievement, so instead Clinton rebuilt his poll ratings by being associated with a series of bite-size quality-of-life initiatives specifically designed to attract the attention of middle-class voters.
There has been something of the Morris-Clinton playbook about initiatives taken by the Minister for the Environment John Gormley lately. Fresh from his proposals to restrict election postering in July, Gormley this week launched a public consultation on new legislation to deal with noise pollution. To spice up his proposals, Gormley floated the notion of gardaí having power to break into homes with malfunctioning alarms.
The suggestion comes in the same week that Senator Dan Boyle was reported as favouring a cut in motorway speed limits, not on road safety grounds, but in order to improve fuel efficiency.
The Green Party has a well-deserved reputation for policy development, particularly on the environment and energy, but every so often they make it hard to take the party seriously by suggesting proposals like these, which are superficially attractive but completely impractical.
Gormley accepted that empowering gardaí to enter people's vacant homes in order to switch off alarms would present significant legal problems because of the constitutional protection for the inviolability of dwellings. He is correct.
Even when investigating the most serious offences, gardaí are, unless absolutely necessary, only allowed to force their way into homes on foot of search warrants issued by either senior Garda officers, peace commissioners or a District Court judge.
In most instances where entry is obtained on such warrants it is done when the householder is present. Legislation giving the gardaí power to access dwellings for the less significant purpose of switching off alarms could only be constitutionally possible if the power was so tightly controlled that it would be used only rarely.
Even if constitutionally possible this idea would be questionable. Garda time spent breaking into homes to switch off alarms is effort that should be used more significantly.
Every such Garda operation to switch off an alarm would have to involve at least two gardaí, since no garda could be comfortable exercising the power to enter a private dwelling on his or her own. They would presumably have to be accompanied by a locksmith or someone else with the equipment necessary to break in, and by someone with the expertise to disable the alarm.
Then the gardaí would become responsible for the vacant premises, would probably have to change the locks and hold the keys until the homeowner returned. All this would consume much effort, which could more usefully be deployed - particularly at night - in tackling public order incidents or violent crimes.
Gormley's recent initiative derives from a Private Member's Bill on Noise Pollution published by the Green Party in opposition. It was a worthy piece of draft legislation prepared by Deputy Ciaran Cuffe, for which he received compliments from TDs on all sides. Indeed, when Cuffe's Bill was debated at second stage in late November 2006, the then government, unusually, did not oppose its progress to Committee Stage. Cuffe's Bill fell when the last Dáil was dissolved, and since Gormley became Minister for the Environment just over a year ago he has worked at further developing Cuffe's proposals.
The notion of giving gardaí the power to break into homes was not in the Cuffe Bill, which makes one think Gormley is suggesting it as an attention-grabbing exercise, knowing it will never be possible to introduce.
Surely if it was seriously being considered, Gormley could have used the last year to explore the legal situation rather than just running the idea up the August silly season flagpole. His approach is unfortunate because this impractical suggestion distracts from the substance of wider noise pollution proposals he and Cuffe have developed.
Local authorities are responsible for dealing with complaints of noise pollution in residential areas. The system is ineffective, especially at night, when relevant personnel are not available. Gormley's suggestion is that this gap be plugged by a system of on-the-spot fines administered by gardaí. However, the problems should be addressed by reforming service delivery in local government, rather than by dumping another local authority function on gardaí.
Local authorities should be asked to be more effective at using powers they have and should be required to overcome work practices which make it impossible for them to tackle residential noise pollution on a 24-hour basis.