‘Brazen’ disregard for roads policing needs to be addressed quickly – minister

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

A “brazen” disregard for roads policing duties needs to be addressed as quickly as possible, a minister has said.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said that an unpublished report found gardai showed a “blatant disregard” for their job while they knew their actions were being reviewed.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 the Garda Commissioner mandating that frontline gardai dedicate 30 minutes of road policing duties per shift.

Sean Canney, a junior minister with responsibility for road safety, said the 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 gardaí,” 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 conducted by the consultancy firm Crowe, which has carried out investigations on behalf of An Garda Siochana previously, but planned to meet the Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan and both the outgoing and incoming Garda Commissioners over the issue.

“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.