The government has been accused of creating a “crowded, confused and inefficient oversight regime” for the gardaí by the force’s main watchdog.
In a hard-hitting report, Josephine Feehily, the chairwoman of the Policing Authority, has outlined a series of difficulties in holding the gardaí to account and has also complained that her agency has been unable to access necessary information in certain cases because it does not have enough power.
In the assessment of the authority’s own performance since it was established in January 2016, Ms Feehily said it was constrained by ambiguity over its role and that of the justice minister, and that the uncertainty surrounding this could undermine public confidence.
“It has also impacted on the manner in which some stakeholders and groups, including the Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice, engage with the authority. This is largely as a result of a cumbersome legislative scheme,” Ms Feehily said.
The report follows a series of garda scandals, including the Maurice McCabe whistleblower scandal, which have led to calls for a more robust and accountable system of oversight for the force. Ms Feehily said she needed more evidence of the gardaí enacting recommended reforms before she could assess the authority’s influence. She added that the agency was hampered by the garda commissioner’s accountability to the justice minister. “Linked to this has been the challenge of overseeing the performance of the Garda Síochána as an organisation while the head of that organisation, the garda commissioner, is accountable to the minister,” Ms Feehily said.
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While the simple solution would be to make the garda commissioner accountable to the Policing Authority, the chairwoman said, it could not be taken in isolation from a range of key policy and legal issues such as the exclusion of the authority of oversight of security matters.
She added that the watchdog may need stronger powers as it had experienced difficulties in accessing information from gardaí. She also called for the power to challenge the deployment of resources by the force and argued that a probation period was needed for all appointments to senior garda ranks.
While highlighting a number of positive changes the authority had made, its chairwoman said there was still “quite a way to go”.
“The authority will not be in a position to assess itself as truly effective until such times as it can deepen its assessment of garda performance and see evidence of substantial progress by the Garda Síochána in implementing its reform programme,” Ms Feehily said.
She admitted the authority had not been able to be as effective as it would have liked challenging how the force used its resources.
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Ms Feehily said the authority did not believe its nine members were enough to carry out proper oversight. She said that she wanted the number of staff working for the authority to rise to 12.
She also called for greater clarity over the respective roles of the Policing Authority, the Garda Inspectorate and the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission as to “which body is expected to do what”.
Ms Feehily said that duplication of effort was wasteful and frustrating for the various bodies, gardaí and the people of Ireland.
The functions of the authority were described as “broadly adequate” but also “frequently cumbersome, over circumscribed and inefficient”.
“Partly due to the compartmentalised set of bodies and to the limited remit that the authority has in relation to resources, they are not adequate to oversee and assess performance in all of its dimensions,” she said.
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Comment and public reaction indicated that the authority’s functions were not adequate to meet public expectations, Ms Feehily said. She also said there was no settled view as to what the appropriate form of independent policing oversight should be.
Few commentators appeared to appreciate the limits placed on the agency by legislation, which she acknowledged indicated that the organisation itself had not been as effective as it might have been in explaining and publicising its role and remit.
She added that the authority believed a particular weakness was that it was given a “very narrow, circumscribed role” in relation to resources provided to gardaí.
Overall the report said that the authority was convinced that oversight of the gardaí was “very necessary” and believed it had provided valuable and transparent checks which had been missing up to its establishment.
The Policing Authority said it believed it had been “a positive disrupter” and had made a difference particularly in bringing independent challenge, a growing rigour and persistence to performance oversight within the force.
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Ms Feehily said that within a short time frame it had established a plan to provide oversight of how gardaí functioned and had ensured that such oversight was subject to public scrutiny. Among the measures introduced by the Policing Authority were a code of ethics for gardaí and a system for appointing senior garda members and civilians.