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Should another Garda Commissioner resign?

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  • Options
    #1622
    blanch152
    Registered Users Posts: 27,174 ✭✭✭✭blanch152


    Matt Barrett wrote: »
    IMO, people have a civic duty to report a crime. It's about a sense of decency. You don't have to of course but do we want a society made up of people who won't put themselves out for their community/society? A commissioner withholding information on an investigation of national importance would be on another level all together.
    I'm glad we got someone from outside Garda ranks, but I think this posting is another crisis waiting to happen. Takes some light away from the not fit for purpose Garda organisation, it's book keeping and treatment of the lower ranks of it's own members mind.


    The new Commissioner said he wouldn't have any information on the issue that the Gardai don't already have.

    Are you saying that you don't believe him?


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    #1623
    tayto lover
    Registered Users Posts: 51,485 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    blanch152 wrote: »
    The new Commissioner said he wouldn't have any information on the issue that the Gardai don't already have.

    Are you saying that you don't believe him?

    What about the sworn evidence he gave to Smithwicks and then refused to back up? Surely he can come out now and explain things.


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    #1624
    McMurphy
    Registered Users Posts: 13,365 ✭✭✭✭McMurphy


    Oh dear.

    Disclosures Tribunal finds Martin Callinan and former press officer ran 'campaign' against Maurice McCabe

    • The Disclosures Tribunal is “convinced” there was a “campaign of calumny” by former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan against Maurice McCabe.
    • It found that this was “actively aided” by former garda press officer Superintendent Dave Taylor, but that he didn’t do it “under orders”.
    • Callinan and Taylor were “in it together”, the Tribunal found.
    • Maurice McCabe was “repulsively denigrated for being no more than a good citizen and police officer”.
    • There is “no credible evidence” that Nn O’Sullivan played any hand act or part in any campaign conducted by Commissioner Martin Callinan and by Superintendent David Taylor against Maurice McCabe.
    • Mistakes made at the O’Higgins Commission into earlier claims by McCabe “had nothing to do with Nn O’Sullivan.
    • An Garda Sh needs a “complete turn-around in their attitude” which must be led by senior management.


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    #1625
    Hitman3000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,596 ✭✭✭Hitman3000


    No mention of Noirin's missing phones and sim cards I see.


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    #1626
    Captain Obvious
    Registered Users Posts: 4,165 ✭✭✭Captain Obvious


    Hitman3000 wrote: »
    No mention of Noirin's missing phones and sim cards I see.


    You wouldn't be trying to denigrate a woman who has been vindicated by the Tribunal would you?


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    #1627
    Hitman3000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,596 ✭✭✭Hitman3000


    Captain Obvious wrote:
    You wouldn't be trying to denigrate a woman who has been vindicated by the Tribunal would you?


    It's a genuine question, was the missing phones addressed? Dave Taylors apparently went missing also.


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    #1628
    Wheeliebin30
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,593 ✭✭✭Wheeliebin30


    I see Francis Fitzgerald was vindicated too.

    The opposition are a joke, Sinn Fein forcing her to resign for political gain when she done nothing wrong.

    Will they be held accountable for this?

    Of course not.


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    #1629
    tayto lover
    Registered Users Posts: 51,485 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    400 pages saying feck all.
    Typical Tribunal. Jobs for the boys.
    Just as I expected.


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    #1630
    James Brown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,015 ✭✭✭✭James Brown


    Delighted for McCabe, rank and file Garda and the country. We need people to feel like they can call out wrong doing without being punished. While the treatment of McCabe might be a cautionary tale for any would-be whistle blower, in the least he has been vindicated and rightly praised.

    What's next? Well Flanagan says he'll have a look at the report and take it from there. I don't like the way it's all centered on Taylor and Callinan. People like that don't operate in a vacuum. I can't see Flanagan making any bold changes, they got Fitzgerald a pass for her incompetence so I think this government may leave well enough alone, which will solve nothing.
    Lots of unanswered questions; laptops, phones, the Tulsa series of unfortunate events.

    I'd like to see McCabe sue Callinan and Taylor or some form of retribution. That would be a lesson for any others in the ranks.


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    #1631
    Wheeliebin30
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,593 ✭✭✭Wheeliebin30


    tayto lover wrote: »
    400 pages saying feck all.
    Typical Tribunal. Jobs for the boys.
    Just as I expected.

    Read 400 pages already have you?


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    #1632
    tayto lover
    Registered Users Posts: 51,485 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    Read 400 pages already have you?

    I'm listening to RTE's synopsis.
    It's as I expected.
    There is no need for half the Tribunals.
    They are held to appease loonies.


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    #1633
    FrancieBrady
    Registered Users Posts: 66,832 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    I see Francis Fitzgerald was vindicated too.

    The opposition are a joke, Sinn Fein forcing her to resign for political gain when she done nothing wrong.

    Will they be held accountable for this?

    Of course not.

    What page does it say that she and Leo didn't mislead the Dail? Can you link to it?


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    #1634
    Hitman3000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,596 ✭✭✭Hitman3000


    Matt Barrett wrote:
    I'd like to see McCabe sue Callinan and Taylor or some form of retribution. That would be a lesson for any others in the ranks.


    I hope if he does its a private action. There is no way the taxpayer should be on the hook for the behaviour of Callinan or Taylor.


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    #1635
    Edward M
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,837 ✭✭✭Edward M


    tayto lover wrote: »
    400 pages saying feck all.
    Typical Tribunal. Jobs for the boys.
    Just as I expected.

    Was it a waste of time then?


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    #1636
    James Brown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,015 ✭✭✭✭James Brown


    FrancieBrady wrote: »
    What page does it say that she and Leo didn't mislead the Dail? Can you link to it?

    I would say saving political behinds didn't fall into what she did or 'forgot' to do re: McCabe.


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    #1637
    McMurphy
    Registered Users Posts: 13,365 ✭✭✭✭McMurphy


    Still hard to fathom that the head of our states police force sat and described whistleblowers as "disgusting" while he was taking part in one of the most vile and disgusting smear campaigns possiblein order to discredit someone for doing the right thing.

    Let that sink in will you.


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    #1638
    McMurphy
    Registered Users Posts: 13,365 ✭✭✭✭McMurphy


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    ISinn Fein forcing her to resign for political gain when she done nothing wrong.

    Will they be held accountable for this?

    Of course not.

    Didn't Frances finally hand in the notice when FF demanded she did so?

    That's the same FF that FG are in cahoots with now and then to form a govt?

    And this report had no bearing on her resignation, never mind vindicated her


    Jesus, this all happened fairly recently. Ancient history it is not. :pac:


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    #1639
    Hurrache
    Registered Users Posts: 10,148 ✭✭✭✭Hurrache


    tayto lover wrote: »
    400 pages saying feck all.
    Typical Tribunal. Jobs for the boys.
    Just as I expected.

    It says feck all if you either don't read it, or don't want to know what the findings are.


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    #1640
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    tayto lover wrote: »
    400 pages saying feck all.
    Typical Tribunal. Jobs for the boys.
    Just as I expected.

    Feck all? The language used to describe Dave Taylor is some of the most brutal language I've ever seen in any kind of official government or tribunal report:

    The judge wrote: “It is an utter mystery as to why Commissioner Martin Callinan could have decided to choose Superintendent David Taylor as his press officer. Both of them have given explanations for this decision: that David Taylor was talented, experienced, articulate and so on. He is not. All of this is just plain untrue.”

    That's about as harsh as it gets. Did not expect to see the report so bluntly attack Callinan and Taylor. :eek:


  • Options
    #1641
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    I see Francis Fitzgerald was vindicated too.

    The opposition are a joke, Sinn Fein forcing her to resign for political gain when she done nothing wrong.

    Will they be held accountable for this?

    Of course not.

    It vindicates her in relation to her decision not to interfere in the O'Higgins commission, which was the right decision. But it also notes that it's likely she did indeed read the very email which she informed the Oireachtas did not exist.

    It's unlikely to have been malicious, just incompetent. Typical case of a politician giving a defensive answer without first checking their facts. In my view, that in and of itself is unacceptable in a minister of the State. Misleading the Oireachtas either by deliberate untruthfulness, or by making statements without first establishing their accuracy, is far below the standard we should expect from members of the cabinet.

    That's just my opinion though. I'm fairly well known to be fairly radical in my interpretation of the "Oireachtas holding ministers to account" concept - misleading the Oireachtas through entirely avoidable negligence is clearly not as severe as deliberately lying outright, but it's still far below the standard of work we should be demanding from members of the cabinet, if the Oireachtas is to function as the check and balance it's supposed to be. So to my mind, it was right that she was forced out over this.

    The whole culture of deflection in Irish politics needs to change. Instead of coming out either all guns blazing or "I'm not answering this because reasons", why can't we have a culture of "I'm not certain of my facts in this case. I will go back to my office and investigate [in this case, search my email system] and give a full answer to this question once I am in possession of all the facts"? That's how the Oireachtas should function.

    The opposition aren't blameless either, of course - the hostile and adversarial nature of Oireachtas exchanges and the desire for instant one-upmanship is common on all sides of it, not just the government. FF behaved as abysmally when they were in power, as did Labour - given their performance up North I have no doubt that SF would do so as well, and in that context it seems a safe assumption that the left independents wouldn't be any better than the rest of their colleagues. So just as the Gardai need a wholescale culture reform, so too does the Oireachtas and the Executive, and how they interact with one another.

    To analogise this, if I was called into a meeting with my boss and he asked if I was aware of a certain email, I'd expect to be fired if I first said "I don't have to answer that" and then said "The email doesn't exist", only to later discover that it did. The correct response would be "I'm not sure about that, I'll go and check straight away". Equally though, a decent boss would accept this answer and say "fair enough, I'll look forward to hearing from you later today" as opposed to the usual opposition turning of the screw a la "AHHH, you should have that on the tip of your tongue! SCANDAL! SCANDAL!"

    All sides are to be blamed here to some extent, but IMO the downplaying of this breakdown in the Oireachtas / Executive relationship as illustrated by the email debacle is frustrating. This should be considered a bigger issue for Irish politics in general than it is.


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    #1642
    Alan_P
    Registered Users Posts: 264 ✭✭Alan_P


    FrancieBrady wrote: »
    What page does it say that she and Leo didn't mislead the Dail? Can you link to it?




    http://www.thejournal.ie/frances-fitzgerald-disclosure-tribunal-4280118-Oct2018/


    I don't know the page number, but this is the exact quote :-


    [The tribunal] accepts evidence of former tiste Frances Fitzgerald of her response to events at O’Higgins Commission as "an honest appraisal of the situation".

    Effectively a Garda Commissioner was hounded from office over something that wasn't happening, and a Minister for Justice was hounded from office for not stopping the thing that wasn't happening.


    Both Noirin O'Sullivan and France Fitzgerald are owed an apology, by a number of people.


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    #1643
    FrancieBrady
    Registered Users Posts: 66,832 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    Alan_P wrote: »
    http://www.thejournal.ie/frances-fitzgerald-disclosure-tribunal-4280118-Oct2018/


    I don't know the page number, but this is the exact quote :-


    [The tribunal] accepts evidence of former tiste Frances Fitzgerald of her response to events at O’Higgins Commission as "an honest appraisal of the situation".

    Effectively a Garda Commissioner was hounded from office over something that wasn't happening, and a Minister for Justice was hounded from office for not stopping the thing that wasn't happening.


    Both Noirin O'Sullivan and France Fitzgerald are owed an apology, by a number of people.

    Where does it say that she didn't mislead the Dail? Which is why she had to resign.


  • Options
    #1644
    tayto lover
    Registered Users Posts: 51,485 ✭✭✭✭tayto lover


    hatrickpatrick wrote: »
    Feck all? The language used to describe Dave Taylor is some of the most brutal language I've ever seen in any kind of official government or tribunal report:

    The judge wrote: “It is an utter mystery as to why Commissioner Martin Callinan could have decided to choose Superintendent David Taylor as his press officer. Both of them have given explanations for this decision: that David Taylor was talented, experienced, articulate and so on. He is not. All of this is just plain untrue.”

    That's about as harsh as it gets. Did not expect to see the report so bluntly attack Callinan and Taylor. :eek:
    There won't be anyone prosecuted.
    Nobody will lose financially except the taxpayer.
    Just like every other Tribunal over the years.


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    #1645
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    FrancieBrady wrote: »
    Where does it say that she didn't mislead the Dail? Which is why she had to resign.

    The report states on page 159 that, essentially, a busy minister can be forgiven for filing an email away in memory and getting on with their job - to which I'd actually agree, particularly if the email contained the sort of vague and verbose legalese which it most likely contained. However, in the next section, it makes this remark with regard to O'Sullivan, which IMO can be equally applied to members of the cabinet, and in particular, to the reactions of Flanagan, Varadkar, and FitzGerald during the controversy over the email:
    Public relations as a substitute for actual fact

    One other matter is worthy of comment. A close reading of the chronology will indicate the extent to which a public controversy began to grow in florid form following on the deception of the media by the persons who leaked selected extracts from the O’Higgins Commission transcript. This led to a flurry of emails, memoranda, communications at high level, drafts, counter drafts and final drafts about the Garda Commissioner’s approach to those who point out irregularities within our police force.

    The tribunal is far from impressed by any of this. It seems that our public life is now to be dominated by spin and that plain speaking is elided in favour of meaningless public relations speak.

    This is a hideous development in Irish public life.

    We have been brought to a situation where those who genuinely know their job are expected to put things in a form which no longer garners respect and which is far from the requirement of plain speaking. It is frankly bizarre that when the Garda Commissioner is asked about her approach to a matter of serious public importance, she is not left alone to answer from her own mind but instead that comments and suggestions amounting to drafts of letters of several thousand words are whizzed over in her direction so that she can send the same thing back again. The public are then expected to digest this as being her utterance.

    The tribunal found this practice unworthy of our public service. It adds to the sense of public distrust in the key institutions of the State. Public service is not about public relations. Plain speaking by those who know what they are talking about is the only acceptable way to address the Irish people.


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    #1646
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    tayto lover wrote: »
    There won't be anyone prosecuted.
    Nobody will lose financially except the taxpayer.
    Just like every other Tribunal over the years.

    Of course there won't, but this is a deficit of legislation, not of the tribunal itself. Cover ups of this nature are not themselves illegal - they certainly should be. Callinan is not guilty of a criminal offence in intentionally engaging in a deliberate cover up and attempting to harass a whistleblower into giving up his cause, but that in and of itself should be a specific, named criminal offense in our statute books. As commented earlier though, this is unlikely to happen because the very people who have the power to legislate in this manner, are the same people most likely to engage in such cover-ups. The Turkeys voting for Christmas conundrum at its finest.


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    #1647
    McMurphy
    Registered Users Posts: 13,365 ✭✭✭✭McMurphy


    On McCabe.
    The Disclosures Tribunal's third interim report has concluded that garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe is a genuine person who at all times has had the interests of the people of Ireland uppermost in his mind.

    It found he regarded those interests as superior to any loyalty which he had to the police force of the State, but that neither interest should ever be in conflict.

    Furthermore, the report has strongly criticised the child and family agency Tusla for its handling of a false rape claim made against Sgt McCabe.

    There were people from within these very forums (thread even) who casted aspirations on his integrity and sincerity.

    They need to take a long hard look at themselves imo.


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    #1648
    Hitman3000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,596 ✭✭✭Hitman3000


    Johnny Dogs wrote:
    There were people from within these very forums (thread even) who casted aspirations on his integrity and sincerity.


    Repeatedly.


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    #1649
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    Johnny Dogs wrote: »
    There were people from within these very forums (thread even) who casted aspirations on his integrity and sincerity.

    They need to take a long hard look at themselves imo.

    I don't blame those folks tbh, it just shows how successful those in power have been in recent decades, in convincing people that even practises which have been successfully exposed in the past are simply "not the way we do things" in this day and age, and to therefore discard any such allegations as "crackpot conspiracy theories". Law enforcement spied on activist groups in the 70s - "they'd never do that now, it's just not the done thing". Government illegally spying on its opposition a la Watergate - "ancient history. Our government would never behave this way." Countless instances of government agencies using false information to smear their opponents - "What are you, living in a Bourne movie? That's just not how our government operates anymore".

    I hope the findings of this report will remind everyone that the ingrained notion that the state and its agencies are morally above playing dirty, is complete and total bullsh!t. An entire generation has effectively been successfully conditioned to believe that abuse of power is something which happened in the dark past, and that everything is ok now. Maybe this report will go some way towards dispelling that nice, but totally untrue, fantasy of how the state works.


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    #1650
    FrancieBrady
    Registered Users Posts: 66,832 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    hatrickpatrick wrote: »
    The report states on page 159 that, essentially, a busy minister can be forgiven for filing an email away in memory and getting on with their job - to which I'd actually agree,

    The 'busy minister' may be a valid excuse for some people but it was also
    a perfectly legitimate reason for seeking her resignation from the job. If she 'missed' 'forgot' or 'ignored' something so important then she deserved the sack or to fall on her own sword.


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    #1651
    Chips Lovell
    Moderators, Politics Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,266 Mod ✭✭✭✭Chips Lovell


    tayto lover wrote: »
    There is no need for half the Tribunals.
    They are held to appease loonies.

    I don't know. I'd agree with the first half of this but maybe not the second.

    The goal of a tribunal is to try and establish the truth. The problem is they don't appease the loonies. Because they're not interested in the truth and will just continue to believe what they want to believe. They've already decided themselves what the truth is and it doesn't matter who the tribunal condemns or who the tribunal clears, it isn't going to change their opinions.


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