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“SOMETHING IS ROTTEN in the state of Denmark.”
What the hell is happening within An Garda Síochána?
Today, politicians have been lining up to call for the Commissioner’s job, to question if the force is (still) mired by dysfunctionality and to show serious concern about how gardaí are treated if they blow the whistle.
Since Fine Gael entered government in 2011, we’ve seen a Justice Minister and a Commissioner resign. We’ve had numerous reports into various practices within An Garda Síochána. There have been endless front pages about GSOC investigations. New legislation has been enacted to try to protect whistleblowers. And, finally, an independent Policing Authority was established – which, so far, has been none too impressed with what it has seen.
Yet, here we are again.
“Groundhog Day,” exclaimed Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil.
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” her opposition colleague Charlie McConalogue said from the Fianna Fáil benches.
“It is over two years,” an exasperated Mick Wallace added.
How in God’s name can the Minister say she is dealing with these matters?
Despite sending an email to all members over the summer about how to be a whistleblower, it seems management are still coming to terms with how to deal with that breed of garda.
The latest scandal
On Tuesday morning, the Irish Examiner’s Mick Clifford revealed that two senior gardaí had made protected disclosures of a very serious nature to the Justice Minister.
Under whistleblower legislation, they told Frances Fitzgerald that senior garda management orchestrated a significant campaign to destroy the name and character of a another garda whistleblower.
They allege that the campaign included:
One of the gardaí who has made the disclosure has admitted to taking part in the campaign.
Was this not said before?
As Wallace mentioned during Leaders’ Questions today, we have been talking about the treatment of whistleblowers for years; namely John Wilson and Maurice McCabe, as well as the lesser-known Keith Harrison and Nick Keogh.
Clare Daly summed up how their lives have gone since blowing the whistle in the Dáil yesterday:
Nevertheless, two and a half years on, this whistleblower [Nick Keogh] has been out sick for almost a year and is surviving on just over €200 per week. He has had five internal investigations drummed up against him. Medical certificates submitted that stated he was out with work-related stress were changed to indicating absence from flu. Meanwhile, the superintendent who stood over all that is on the promotions list.
“Four times one of the garda whistleblowers wrote directly to the Minister for Justice and told her of the treatment he was experiencing.
He made the point that as his colleague in a different region was getting exactly the same treatment, it could not be a coincidence and it was inconceivable that senior management and the Garda Commissioner would not be aware of it.
“Deputy Wallace and I have raised what has been happening to whistleblowers Nick Keogh and Keith Harrison – who is out for two years, surviving on a pittance with a young family – 19 times.
“His post has been opened and garda patrol cars have cruised down a lane on which he lived, 25km from the nearest garda station. The HSE has called to his children. This has all happened on Garda Commissioner O’Sullivan’s watch.”
What are they actually blowing the whistle on?
Keogh was working as a drugs unit officer in Athlone when he came forward with information about garda involvement in the selling of heroin in the area. He also alleged there was coercion of non-criminal residents into buying drugs in an attempt to boost drugs-unit statistics.
Last weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Keogh’s claims have been substantiated in an internal garda inquiry.
According to journalist John Mooney, the probe found evidence of garda collusion in heroin dealing. It also confirmed that a senior garda took no meaningful action when told about alleged corruption back in 2009. Those involved now face disciplinary measures.
Harrison also worked in Athlone when he arrested a fellow officer for drink driving. After this incident, he says he was harassed and bullied by other members of the force.
Those claims include: the suggestion that people Harrison had previously arrested had been asked whether or not they wished to make complaints about him, Garda surveillance being placed on him with minimal justification, and information regarding a garda inquiry into him being deliberately leaked.
Harrison was eventually transferred to Buncrana in Donegal after being confined to desk work for two years. Currently on unpaid sick leave, he claims that he suffered panic attacks during a five-year campaign of bullying perpetrated by his fellow officers.
Didn’t we deal with Maurice McCabe already?
McCabe became a well-known figure in Ireland after airing concerns around procedures and practices in the Cavan/Monaghan garda division.
He worried about the treatment of victims, as well as the manner in which crimes were investigated in some instances. He has said that the way he was treated subsequently destroyed him, his career and his family.
He was vindicated on the publication of the O’Higgins Report which found him to be a truthful and credible witness, if prone to exaggeration at times.
The judge described the sergeant as a dedicated and committed member of the force who showed courage and has performed a “genuine public service at considerable cost”.
O’Higgins also noted that McCabe took actions out of legitimate and genuine concerns. He also upheld some of his claims. That report concluded that victims of crime in Cavan were failed by gardaí because of deficiencies, resources and problems with management.
And is this latest story more or less significant?
It is more important for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the latest whistleblowers are senior gardaí. One of them has also admitted to being a party in a campaign against another member who had made a protected disclosure.
The Taoiseach has even admitted that the details in the reports from them could very well lead to “the appointment of a sitting judge to look at the documentation”.
More than likely, any investigation will fall outside GSOC’s remit. This might be a good thing as its new chairperson Mary Ellen Ring has already told Oireachtas members that her organisation lacks the “teeth” and resources to deal with issues arising from complaints from whistleblowers.
Secondly, the similarities of the known whistleblowers’ stories can not be easily ignored.
Sick leave, unpaid leave and dealing with media reports and local rumours have been part of the post-whistleblowing routine as mentioned by Daly yesterday.
One of the allegations made this week was that politicians and media were given briefings about those who made complaints.
Last May, Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness told the Dáil that he met with the former commissioner, Martin Callinan in a hotel car park two years ago to talk about McCabe.
At the time, O’Sullivan said she was ‘not aware’ of that meeting.
Wasn’t this all meant to be reformed already?
We have heard a lot about garda reform since O’Sullivan took over the reins from Martin Callinan.
GSOC has been given more powers – but not enough, as referenced above – and the Policing Authority has been established to provide oversight of the force.
But many within An Garda Síochána have pointed to a culture that has not changed. Some have said that O’Sullivan’s oft-repeated remark that dissent is not disloyalty is mere lipservice and not the reality on the ground.
Following the publication of the O’Higgins Report earlier this year, it emerged that at one stage there was an intention to argue to the inquiry that the sergeant made his concerns about work in the Cavan-Monaghan district because of a grudge he held against a senior officer.
There were many questions – which remain mostly unanswered – whether the Commissioner had planned to attack the ‘integrity, motivation and credibility’ of Sergeant McCabe as the probe began.
She has always denied this is the case, saying that whistleblowers – including McCabe – were friends of the gardaí.
What next?
Fitzgerald wasn’t giving much away today, telling Mary Lou McDonald and Mick Wallace that due process would have to be followed.
She also said that there is no reason for her to not have full confidence in the Commissioner given that no findings of wrongdoing have been made against her.
Although she said she was “extremely concerned” about policing in Athlone, the Tánaiste noted that the protected disclosures were merely allegations and not findings of fact.
For her part, O’Sullivan has said that “she was not privy to nor approved of any action designed to target any garda employee who may have made a protected disclosure and would condemn any such action”.
However, the calls for her to resign are mounting. If these latest allegations stick and Daly is correct that there is a “huge gulf” between O’Sullivan’s public statements and what is actually happening under her watch, then she may need to be wary of any late-night knocks on her door. It could be a public servant waiting to do Enda Kenny’s bidding. Martin Callinan can tell her all about it.
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The climate change agenda continues unabated.
Constant sensational articles spreading doom and gloom. Incessant scaremongering facilitated by Green Party propaganda.
@Patrick Presley: And there’s never any mention of how scientists have been interfering with Mother Nature for over 70 years or more!:
@Patrick Presley: I want a safe and pleasant future for my children. What will they say about our generation after we’re gone? I want them to say that we made reasonable sacrifice and effort to preserve the planet for future generations, not that we denied proven scientific consensus, scapegoated and vilified those making an effort, and promoted misinformation and lies for our own selfish short-term gain. The Green Party has an environmental agenda because they’re the bloody Green Party, the clue is in the name. You might not love them but they were elected by the people of this country and they play a role as part of an elected coalition. All I hear in the comments on here is ME, ME, ME. NOW, NOW, NOW. Where did our compassionate, selfless, generous nation go? Why are those voices not heard? Just this relentless, toxic, ignorant drivel.
@Radical Centrist: Everybody hears that, but rich renegade politicians don’t help the matter in hand. Maybe that’s where our compassionate, selfless, generous nation went
@Radical Centrist:
Are you sleeping in a wet doorway tonight ? We have more pressing issues to deal with.
@Regular John: It’s not one thing or the other. Caring about the environment doesn’t mean not caring about homelessness or housing. It’s possible to tackle social, environmental and economic issues in balance, at the same time. That’s why we have government departments and ministries.
@Paul Gorry: Who exactly is a rich renegade? Seriously, we elected these people to represent us. They have a mandate. It lasts 5 years and then we get to elect again. Why do we insist on abusing and obstructing people who have a job to do on our behalf?
@Radical Centrist: Stephen Donnelly health minister is one. Can you not see the disturbing signs coming in the future? Can you not see the fact that ff got into bed with fg?Abusing and obstructing people that have a job to do? Well their not doing a good job at the moment infact they are making it worse.” People who have a job to do on our behalf ” is that going well for you at the moment? Just vote for eamonn so!
@Radical Centrist: There is no such thing as a mandate.
That is a contrivance of political groups to pretend we have given them our permission to do what we do not want them to do.
@Radical Centrist: If you want a safe and pleasant future for your kids then The Green Party will not bring you that.
Their policies do more to harm than help the environment.
Their policies do work to improve the profits of businness though.
@Radical Centrist: you would drink the cool aid in a second.
@Radical Centrist: Might you be someone connected to this article under a pseudonym. I carry out many different green actions from recycling, reducing journeys, reducing our energy usage, biodiversity initiatives. I would love to own an electric car, I would love to retrofit my home, I would love to have PV panels, but under a Green Govt with 2 of us working, we are living month to month & can’t afford any of these initiatives. Indeed, I have working adult children living at home because they can’t afford exorbitant rent, let alone buy a home & they watch as ROG accommodates thousands arriving daily. I now despise the Green Party, they didn’t bring the people with them & have failed the Green issues in Ireland, just enabled big business such as Energy companies. You reap what you sow.
@Radical Centrist: If you have a home and children and the means to support them, then lucky you. But for the tens of thousands that haven’t that present-day luxury (used to be a given), their priority is to get a home and a normal settled life.
NOT helped by the Green minister inviting half the world to move here and sample our generous housing giveaways – just as long as you’re not indigenous working Irish.
It’s not the Grens’ environmental agenda that bothers people. It’s their uncontrolled immigration policy, their tax tax tax policy, ie take from the middle workers and give to the rich for their expensive home upgrades as well as the welfare brigade. It’s their addiction to long-distance flights,
It’s their indifference to the housing crisis
@Roy Dowling: Like many commenters here, I don’t want to give my name for obvious reasons. What would you do if I did? There’s quite a sinister tone to your question.
@SV3tN8M4: I’m not connected in any way to this article. I’m not sure why the Green Party is being discussed in relation to an article about Simon Harris. I don’t think the Green Party is responsible for all of society’s ills, like many people seemingly do. I think their limited minority role in the coalition is a positive balance to their coalition partners, and they have stuck to their convictions, at the expense of populist approval. And if people hate them so much, they’ll get an opportunity within a year to vote for other candidates. As you say, you reap what you sow.
Jesus, we have 4 thousand homeless kids at the moment and he’s going on about the climate nonsense. The guy is nothing but a tool.
@Regular John: We have 4,500 children homeless. You can double that number to include just the mothers, & a lot more when you include both parents! Then we have a huge number of single people who will be retiring & the elderly who just won’t have the pension to cover the cost of today’s rentals.
@Regular John: The articles about our Taoiseach elects record on environmental issues in his time in office, by an environmental journalist. Why would you say he’s “going on” about “climate nonsense”? None of the quotes are recent. I’m sure there are many other articles about his attitude towards homelessness, if you want to read more about that side of things.
@Radical Centrist:
He is quoted more than once from last weekend at the FG convention. Read the article again…
@Radical Centrist: a Taoiseach elected by fianna gael members. Ye can’t make it up….
@Regular John: he is not the housing minister
@Regular John: a FG convention that didn’t even happen? Where you reading your comics? Oops, The Journal
@Paul Gorry: elected TDs elected by the democratic process of electing TDs who, in Parliament, vote on electing the leader of the country. It’s unbelievable how we elect TDs
@Fintan Pox:
So what if he isn’t the housing minister ? He is about to become leader of the country.
Also, it actually states where and when the convention took place if you bothered to read the article.
@Regular John: that’s nothing that number will continue to rise guaranteed especially since the growing trend of landlords are now evicting families to rent rooms individually. Makes more for them naturally and best of all nothing will be down until it’s too late still lets increase homelessness and immigration will help aswel for everyone involved so what to those who suffer I suppose.
@Colette Kearns: don’t worry our government will have thought that all out had plenty of time to and was more than extremely obvious to see it coming down the line. Wait until the problem is bursting at the seams and there is continued influx of people coming in aswel well thought out indeed.
Ireland needs to banish NGOs
@Oh Mammy: A certain amount of them, yes. Alot of taxpayers money being swindled on wafflers – articles like this are a prime example.
Politicians are pushing the climate scare. Politicians aren’t scientists yet they speak as if they know the facts. They don’t. The moment you start asking tough questions. The whole argument starts to fall apart
@Washpenrebel: 1) It not a scare. Just simple fact.
2) The last thing we’d need is a government of scientists.
3) The real issue is that these politicians are doing what they do to ensure the benefits come to business interests. That generally means the people suffer for their policies.
Policies which all too often have the opposite effect to what is required, i.e. cause harm to the environment or do little or nothing to address the cause of climate change.
The Greens in particular need to be sent the way of the PDs.
If its not one thing its another. Whether it be economic, conflict, immigration , housing ,health, now climate. Mostly created by the people in power. End result is to penalise the ordinary people to scare, to cause concern. I believe climate change its a natural process in our ecology. Happened 6000 yrs ago proven by ice core samples. its a cycle and theres nothing can be done to avoid it. I just want to live a quiet life and stop being constantly bombarded with doom and gloom
@M: Show me a politician and I’ll show you a crisis of some sort – usually of their creation.
@M: Climate changes.
Until humankind caused it, it was driven by we we loosely call natural processes.
We know that Greenhouse Gasses cause these climate changes.
We know that we humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50% in a mere couple of hundred years.
The planet is heating up as a result.
And the planet is developing – working towards – new climate norms. That process will continue until the warmer planet is back in balance again.
How long that will take, and how much different our climates will be, depends on when we stop adding Greenhouse Gasses. For it will take the planet many, many decades – maybe a century or so – for the planet to adjust for the extra Greenhouse Gasses we have already added.
The more we add from this point, the longer it will take, the more the planet will warm, and the greater the planet’s climate will change.
@jak: prophet
Simple Simon should start getting used to the fg crisis that’s looming first methinks..
@Paul Gorry: Wipeout in the Local & European elections will concentrate his mind & the minds of all parties in Dail Eirinn. His failure to rein in Helen Mc Entee & her solo run on Hate Speech legislation & ROG buying up every property in Ireland for Migrants whilst 4170 Irish Children are Homeless, will see him in the history books as the Taoiseach who served the shortest ever term in office.
Typically continually the climate change, where the country is in a poor position in many different areas that need sorting
There’s more than enough being done in Ireland. We are simply nowhere on the emissions league. All the environmental damage has been done before this country ever got going. People are just fed up with career environmentalists preaching and posturing before us all the time. Go to China or India with ye and preach there.
@JP: Much easier to preach here where there is a gullible audience.
Ineptitude somes him up and the rest of the freeloaders in the government
@DJ D: *sums
… ‘climate-shaming’ – right, okay.
“ to anybody who thinks this party is tired, to anyone who thinks this party lacks energy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Wow
Enough about this nonsense and get rid of that fo ol Eamon ryan
There’s no climate crisis and if there was the leadership of clueless Harris wouldn’t get us through it.
This is a cheap rip off of monty python, does anyone remember sending Dustin the turkey to the euro vision, citizens be citizens
Can nobody see the idiotic elephant in the room?
Was reading about Bankman-Fried, and on “ethics stuff”, he said it was “mostly a front” and described ethics as a “dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us”. I think that is also true of Simon Harris, Eamon Ryan, and Micheal Martin, and all the other commentators and NGOs who preach.
Bad summer, wet and windy according to long range forecast, May, June, July very wet. But who cares, Fianna Fail will brighten up your days
If EVERYTHING is a f@cking crisis… then nothing is a crisis. Sick and tired of this rhetoric.
What a waffler
If we’re honest Money is winning here, well paid, hard working people are broke af in Ireland with no services and nothing to show from the first ‘good years’ the country has ever known, the ‘cead mile failte’ has been 100% eradicated. People are not inclined to give 2 f’s about anything other than themselves, and they’re right.
Harris is the ultimate crisis
Spain and Portugal drenched since October what drought ?
Simon Harris is just more of the same. He has sat at the cabinet table for 8 years as home ownership collapsed, as rents sky rocketed and as our health system crumbled.
He is part of a government that is out touch, out of ideas and out of time.
It’s time for new people with new ideas. It’s time for a general election.
I have listened to John Gibbons & Oisin Coghlan articulate their views many times & Oisin comes across as reasonable & genuine in wanting to bring people with him on the Green journey. He even admitted he couldn’t afford an electric car & drove diesel, which I felt was important for him to say as it puts him in the category of most people. We all want to do our bit & and actually do it, but those of us working cannot afford electric cars, to retrofit our homes, or even Green loans.
John Gibbons on the other hand comes across as an arrogant extremist who wants to impose his views on everybody no matter at what cost. His support of some of the Green extremists who carry out very questionable actions is disgusting.
You must bring people with you & you cannot cut people’s livelihoods off !
Climate crisis? A pox on that. On the list of priorities for mankind, that shouldn’t be in the top 2000. People are getting blown to pieces in wars across the globe, human beings are being sold as slaves in Libya and at the United States southern border, old folks in Ireland can’t afford to heat their homes and there isn’t a single, solitary minute advantage to this planet warming up a couple of degrees for the umpteenth time in history? There is no ‘climate crisis ‘. Follow the money, thats were the true answers are. People love money more than anything.
Like the other Earth sciences of geology and biology, the Earth science of climate covers many research topics, so forcing climate into long-term weather for predictive purposes is childish. Long-term weather is cyclical and represented by the seasons.
Ireland’s maritime climate is one topic of research, with all the influences that make our climate mild and wet for our latitude and because the island sits in the Atlantic.
Climate at its broadest includes the daily and annual motions of the Earth as a research topic. Climate at this level is the rate of change in atmospheric, oceanic, and surface conditions across latitudes as the planet turns daily and orbits our parent star.
@Gerald Kelleher: So what should we do?
@Thesaltyurchin: Retreating to more balanced perspectives for cleaner air, water, and countryside would be a good start.
“When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.” Pascal
Climate is not long-term weather.
@Gerald Kelleher: So ignore it and carry on? ‘Believe what I believe’ kinda thing, (science and ‘god’ is a tricky place to be)… while I agree there are several reasons why people want to do this mostly those uber rich (and the ones dumb enough to support them) who have very established ‘revenue streams’ attached to all of this. Change is the only certainty in life, those who resist it always have an agenda.
always amazes me the so called “journalists” ranting about the climate crisis ..seem to be the same people ranting about the “me too” movement ..have the gotten bored of this and moved on to even more ridiculous drama
Simple drop out Simon ffs
The impact of climate change is clear for those that have their eyes open.
SH et al (our government) need to come forward with the strategy to counter the elephant in the room.
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