Gardai who disregard roads policing ‘letting colleagues down’ – Tanaiste

Any gardai who have shown a “brazen” disregard for roads policing are “seriously letting their colleagues down”, Tanaiste Simon Harris has said.

The Fine Gael leader was responding to comments by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, about a report that found some gardai showed a “blatant disregard” for roads policing duties while they knew their actions were being reviewed.

It comes amid a focus on road safety in Ireland, with the Government introducing new speed laws and after the Garda Commissioner mandated that frontline gardai dedicate 30 minutes of road policing duties per shift.

Simon Harris said he did not want to “tar any one group with one brush”, and said he has the utmost respect for gardai.

“Indeed, it’s not that long since we were at a funeral of a member of An Garda Siochana killed while on road traffic policing duties,” he said at Government Buildings.

“Having said that, I am concerned with what I’ve heard, and I’d like to be in a position to read it. So I think it’s important that what the commissioner said he intends to do does happen, that he publishes the report so that we can actually see this and analyse it directly.

“Because any member of An Garda Siochana who is acting in the way that the commissioner outlined is seriously letting their colleagues down in the first instance, colleagues who work every day to keep us safe and would absolutely be undermining our road safety efforts in this country.

“There are far too many empty seats at far too many kitchen tables in Ireland. We’ve worked extremely hard as a country, I don’t just mean as a government, as a country, to improve road safety over many years.

“That progress had stalled in recent years and indeed we’d seen a negative trend, and this is disappointing and concerning.

“But I think it’s important that we have the opportunity to see the report, rather than to comment on a comment about the report.”

Asked if he was surprised that a member of government had not seen the report, considering the policing authority had seen the report in June, he said: “I am somewhat, but I haven’t had an opportunity to discuss this with colleagues in government yet, and I’d obviously like to discuss it in the first instance with the Minister of Justice.”

Sean Canney, a junior minister with responsibility for road safety, said the reported findings were “shocking” and “serious”.

“There’s no point in us bringing in laws, reducing speed limits, doing all of this kind of thing, if we don’t have a functional enforcement section within the Gardai,” he said on RTE Radio.

Mr Canney said his thoughts were with the families of the 95 people who had died on Irish roads so far this year.

He said he had not read the report from consultancy firm Crowe, which has carried out investigations on behalf of An Garda Siochana previously, but planned to meet Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan and both the outgoing and incoming Garda commissioners.

“I’ll be talking to the commissioners to express my deep concern with what is in this report,” he said.

He said the independent Crowe report was conducted while the reviewer was “sitting in the car with a garda that wasn’t doing his duty and didn’t seem to have a problem with that”.

“So I think there is definitely a serious case to be answered here as quickly as possible.”

Mr Harris said he commissioned the examination after he received an anonymous report from a whistleblower.

The chairwoman of the Policing and Community Safety Authority, Elaine Byrne, said the report was “shocking” and found some gardai showed a “blatant disregard” for road policing while they knew their actions were being reviewed.

“They were openly hostile to doing their job,” she said, in what she described as a “wake-up call” for An Garda Siochana.

She also described an issue with fear among Garda managers of carrying out poor performance management, which she said Mr Harris agreed was an issue.