Sir, - In your Editorial of April 25th you accuse the rank and file members of An Garda Siochana of proposing to engage in "a collective lie" or "an agreed untruth". You also accuse them of playing fast and loose with the principles they are supposed to defend because they exercised their democratic right to march and place a picket on Dail Eireann. I wonder if this attitude has come about because the march on April 21st was so well supported and could not be so easily ridiculed as last year's.
It is sad and alarming to see a liberal and forward-thinking paper like yours apparently hankering back to the Dickensian working conditions that gardai endured in the pre-Conroy era. Overtime or lack of overtime is not the issue here, nor is lost relativity with nurses. What is at issue is lost relativity with every other group of workers in this State. What is at issue is being excluded from the Social Partnership; being treated as second-class citizens. Setting "realistic productivity" is not at issue, but getting paid for productivity achieved over the past 15 or 16 years is. What is also at issue is broken trust.
In November 1997 the GRA was told there was to be a review of Garda pay under an independent chairman. The terms of reference of this review included a reference to the "special and unique position" of the Garda. The chairman would have a decision-making role and the power to make recommendations. On this basis the GRA executive entered the process. It entered with opposition and reservations from some within the GRA. However, the executive had a signed document and so believed it had entered the right process.
Then, on April Fool's Day 1998, the GRA discovered that trust had been broken. The signed agreement and terms of reference had been torn in pieces. The fourday detailed submission had been ignored and the chairman did not have any power to make recommendations. The official side may have thought that they made fools of the GRA that day. But, in reality they only made fools of themselves.
Gardai don't want to be marching. Gardai don't want a "day of action". Gardai don't want to disrupt the Tour de France. However, when the official side engages in the kind of tactics that it has, when it deceives a Statutory Staff Association, when it tears up agreements freely entered into, when it refuses to acknowledge any legitimacy in the arguments put forward by the GRA, then what options are left?
The reality is that gardai are sick of having their legitimate pay grievances ignored or belittled for so long, sick of being offered the crumbs that fall from the table. Now is the time to address these issues in a proper and positive way. - Is mise, Michael O'Boyce,
Fahan, Co Donegal.