Dublin dilemmas

The Irish have become cynical about their public institutions following scandals involving the police, Government and the Church

LORD ACTON?S famous dictum about the corrupting effect of power might have been written to describe the institutional malaise that has infiltrated the three pillars of society in the Irish Republic ? the political system, the police force, An Garda Siochana, and the Catholic Church.

Of these three pillars, the difficulties faced by the Irish Church have been given the most prominence as a result of the revelations of Bishop Eamonn Casey?s love affair with American divorcee Annie Murphy, followed by the even more shocking cases of child abuse by clergy.

As is now acknowledged by the bishops, these scandals were made even more damaging because they were covered up for so long and were only brought to light by a crusading media with the assistance of courageous victims.

Today, as the Church leadership, hesitant and bewildered, adjusts to the loss of what one sociologist has described as the ?moral monopoly? it enjoyed in the long heyday of Catholic Ireland, the focus is now switching to a similar loss of public confidence in the guardians of law and order, the Gardai.

Confirmation of what the Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, has called the force?s ?darkest hour? is contained in two damning reports published by a judge, appointed in March 2002 by the two houses of parliament, the Dail and the Senate, to head an inquiry into allegations of misconduct and mismanagement of the force in County Donegal.

In two interim reports, one published in July 2004 and the second earlier this month, Mr Justice Frederick Morris has found that the force operates in an authoritarian, corrupt, unaccountable and secretive manner. In his official response to the findings of the first report, Mr McDowell, himself a distinguished lawyer, likened the prevailing police culture revealed by the Morris tribunal to a hedgehog that becomes prickly and evasive when called to account. Not surprisingly, sweeping reforms of the force ? the first major overhaul since its foundation ? were promised by Mr McDowell in consultation with the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy. Yet, despite the transfer of some officers away from Donegal and the early retirement of a few others after the media outcry that accompanied the initial report, a year later little progress has been made, causing Mr Justice Morris to repeat his criticisms.

At the heart of the inquiry were complaints from publicans and nightclub owners Frank McBrearty and his son, Frank Jnr, that they were framed and victimised by the Donegal Gardai for the murder of a cattle dealer called Richie Barron in October 1996.

Not only has Mr Justice Morris upheld the McBrearty complaints, he has established that Mr Barron died as a result of a hit-and-run car accident. Consequently, he has found that the McBreartys, and others who were harassed by the police, were innocent of any involvement in the death. He has concluded that the Garda investigation was ?prejudiced, tendentious and utterly negligent in the highest degree?, and he has noted that the general contempt among officers for senior management is a national problem, which makes the force virtually unmanageable.

Last year?s Morris tribunal report concluded: ?The Tribunal has sat through a year of evidence and read thousands of documents and, as a result, has come to the conclusion that An Garda Siochana is losing its character as a disciplined force ... ultimately, the gradual erosion of discipline within An Garda Siochana is a developing situation that will, sooner or later, lead to disaster.?

In terms of line management, the report stated, ?? it was all too easy for Dublin-based Garda Headquarters to ?be hoodwinked and misled? by local officers, while the Department of Justice is ?utterly isolated? from Garda Headquarters.?

Meanwhile, in the last few days, the McBreartys have called for the resignations of Mr McDowell and Mr Conroy, whom they accuse of having received and ignored earlier information about the frame-up. Mr McDowell has tried to defuse the situation by offering a state apology, along with compensation that reportedly could amount to e10 million to the McBreartys and others caught up in the case. In a bid to stave off a High Court action brought by the McBreartys, due to be heard next week in Dublin, legal representatives of the Irish Government have written to Frank Jnr with a view to reaching a settlement for his false arrest and detention.

Irrespective of the outcome of the case, Senator Maurice Hayes, the man appointed by the Irish Government to oversee the implementation of Garda reform, has voiced his concern that the Garda will in the end avoid proper independent scrutiny. He has criticised legislation submitted to the Dail that would establish a supervisory three-person body reporting to the Minister for Justice. Instead, he has called for a police ombudsman such as exists in Northern Ireland.

Unfortunately, at this critical juncture, public cynicism about the third pillar of Irish democracy ? the Government ? is at an all-time high. The first Morris report was not even debated in Parliament, and Irish politicians will soon be off on their summer holidays for four months. There is a widely held view that the politicians are scared of the police.

Another major factor in this mounting public disillusionment is the number of judicial inquiries that have exposed widespread corruption at the heart of the political system ? personified most notably by former Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey. Although Mr Haughey has settled the issue of his unpaid taxes with the revenue authorities, there is massive resentment that he has not been indicted for tax evasion. The only senior politician to be jailed, Ray Burke, a former Minister for Justice under Mr Haughey, was freed earlier this month after serving less than four months in Mountjoy Prison.

Not surprisingly, the slow-moving but costly pace of the tribunals has convinced the public that its main function has been to make lawyers extremely rich while the standard of living for ordinary people has deteriorated.

And the public mood has been further soured over the scandal of old people in nursing homes being illegally charged for their accommodation. As far back as 2001, the then Fine Gael spokesman on health, Gay Mitchell, told the Dail: ?Systematically, the law was flouted, elderly people had their meagre savings taken and even recently there seemed doubt as to whether these people or their families would be compensated.?

Naturally, questions are being asked as to what has gone wrong with a society in which Catholicism remains the majority religion. This unease was articulated by the Governor of Mountjoy, John Lonergan, who said: ?Ours is a sick society ? a society riddled with scandals, corruption and abuses of power, a society that not only neglects its elderly but robs them.?

Arguably, this public dissatisfaction should have provided the Catholic bishops, meeting this week in Maynooth, with an opportunity to restore their former standing. However, hopes that the Church could regain the lost moral high ground are not helped by public unease that neither a government inquiry into clerical sex abuse in the diocese of Ferns, set up after Bishop Brendan Comiskey resigned more than three years ago, has been published, nor that a similar inquiry in the archdiocese of Dublin has even begun.

Indeed, Mary Raftery, the producer of the programme Cardinal Sins, which highlighted the alleged mishandling of cases by Cardinal Desmond Connell, has expressed her concern that ?the issue is again being consigned to the dark corner of Ireland?s past?. This is a view shared by one of the victims, Andrew Madden, who complains that ?those of us who have worked hard and waited quietly for the inquiry are fast running out of patience.?

In this period of paralysis for the three pillars of Irish society, the danger is that Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, will exploit public dissatisfaction over the corruption at the heart of the Dublin Government, the Garda and the Church.

John Cooney is a journalist working in Dublin.