The Guarding of Ireland – The Garda Síochána and the Irish State 1960–2014: A History of the Irish Police Force

By Conor Brady

A very timely analysis of the Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, as it navigates one of the most difficult years since its foundation.

It is a story marked by success and failure, by attempted reform and resistance to change, by outstanding individual performance and deplorable lapses in discipline. More than an account of policing and politics, this is the story of the Republic's troubled coming of age.

In this excellent history of the Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, Conor Brady, the most authoritative historian of Irish policing, explores its successes, its failures and the biggest challenges it has faced from 1960 to 2014, and looks at the recent spate of crises around the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), leading to the resignation of Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, that have rocked the force to its very core.

Beginning with one of the Garda&iacute's greatest tests – maintaining the security of the Irish State during the Northern crisis and the Troubles – Brady goes on to chronicle the emergence of guns in Irish criminal life and the rapid expansion of the domestic drug trade and related gangland warfare, focussing on the interactions of the Gardaí and major Irish crime kingpins including Martin 'the General' Cahill, Gerard 'the Monk' Hutch and John Gilligan, alleged killer of Veronica Guerin.

Acknowledged as one of the successes of the independent Irish State, the Garda Síochána has not been without its flaws and its failings, and the author does not shy away from exploring these.

The Guarding of Ireland comprehensively covers the recent crisis surrounding the alleged bugging of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), privacy concerns in relation to the recording of Garda phone calls, and the penalty points/whistle-blower controversy that led to the resignation of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

Other fascinating subjects explored are how the supposed operational independence of the organisation has led to clashes with those in political authority, from Charlie Haughey to Desmond O'Malley, the difficulties surrounding structural reform and the author's thesis that there is a distinct correlation between the political health of the State and the way its police discharge their functions.

'The Guarding of Ireland focuses on Irish policing from 1969, which saw both the publication of the Conroy report and the commencement of the Troubles, up to the current and ongoing scandals that this year have led to the resignation of both a commissioner and a minister for justice …
[The Guarding of Ireland] is &hellip as much an analysis of the politics of policing as it is of the policing itself. The Troubles, the modernisation of the force, and the rise in crime, drugs and organised crime are all documented in a style that is detailed but still engaging.
Vicky Conway, The Irish Times Weekend Review

'[The Guarding of Ireland] traces the history of An Garda Síochána from 1960 to the present day. It is a fascinating narrative that should be compulsory reading for anybody associated with the current attempts to reform the force, and how it is governed …
For every vignette of personal heroism, like that of Garda [Michael] Reynolds, for every case of dedicated public service from individual members, there are also examples of a culture that leaves much to be desired.
What emerges from these pages is that the culture within the force is attributable, to a great extent, to attitudes and oversight from its political masters. In this regard, nothing looms as large as the darkest days of the Troubles.
Mick Clifford, Irish Examiner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Sep 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9780717159345

Conor Brady

Conor Brady has been a journalist, editor and author for more than 40 years and is widely recognised as the most authoritative historian of Irish policing. From Tullamore, he studied history and politics at UCD. On graduation in 1969 he joined The Irish Times where he was editor from 1986 to 2002, the culmination of a long, successful career in print and broadcast journalism. His memoir Up with The Times was published by Gill & Macmillan in 2005. Brady was also editor of the Garda Review for a time and in 1974 published a history of the Garda Síochána from its foundation to 1972, Guardians of the Peace (Gill & Macmillan). Since retiring from The Irish Times he has continued to have a varied and interesting career. Among the roles he has assumed are writer of crime fiction, member of the Remembrance Commission, founding Commissioner of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and weekly columnist with The Sunday Times.

Book preview

Chapter 1

CHANGING THE GUARD: THE 1960S

‘No organised crimes of violence were recorded in 1964 nor were any such crimes recorded in 1963.’

– REPORT OF THE GARDA COMMISSIONER ON CRIME 1964

In the first week of May 1964, the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Daniel J. Costigan, put the finishing touches on what would be his last Annual Report on crime in Ireland.

Secure in his office in Garda Headquarters, facing out across the expanse of the Phoenix Park, the fifth Commissioner since the foundation of the State should have been able to enjoy a sense of accomplishment in the 12th year of his tenure.

He could have had little reason to doubt that he and his successors would continue to operate in conditions of tranquillity in which a policeman’s lot was a fairly happy one. Objectively, he had much to feel positive about.

But within a few years, this apparent idyll would be gone forever. The force over which he now presided would face crises he probably could never have imagined. And the State which he and that force were committed to serve would undergo challenges that would be nothing less than existential.

Ireland in 1963 and 1964 was a country virtually free of serious crime. Costigan’s report recorded 16,203 indictable offences, about one sixth of the crime rate, proportionate to population, of England and Wales. The Garda’s detection rate was 69 per cent. In the most serious category, ‘Offences against the Person’, (1,047) the detection rate was an astonishing 95%. Beyond some burglaries, mainly around Dublin, there was no professional crime.¹

In the year under review (ending September 30th 1963) there had been four murders in the State. Two resulted in ‘not guilty’ verdicts and one – the killing of 16-year-old Hazel Mullen by South African student Shan Mohangi – yielded a conviction for manslaughter. The fourth case, the strangling of 21-year-old Cecilia McEvoy, near Portlaoise, remained unsolved although a suspect died by misadventure while the investigation was in train.

There were other factors that should have given the Commissioner cause to feel satisfied. The Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) campaign of violence, started in 1956, codenamed ‘Operation Harvest’ and focusing on the Northern Ireland border, had officially ended in 1962. The IRA was a spent force, its leadership scattered and the great bulk of its weaponry seized by the security forces North and South.

The Border campaign had resulted in the deaths of 18 people. But there was no popular uprising among Nationalists in Northern Ireland, as IRA strategists had hoped. Opinion in the Republic was largely indifferent although there were local sympathies for IRA casualties.

The Garda Síochána had responded to the challenge posed by the campaign, under the stern direction of the coalition government led by Fine Gael’s John A. Costello. For most of the men in Costello’s Cabinet, the civil war was a living memory. There would be no tolerance for self-styled soldiers of the Republic.

The government invoked the Offences against the State Act in January 1957, introducing internment without trial. The Northern Ireland government did likewise under its Special Powers Act. It was an undeclared co-ordination.

Operations were directed from Garda headquarters by a strengthened ‘C3’ (crime) Branch, led by Chief Superintendent Patrick Carroll and Chief Superintendent John Gilroy. Carroll was a veteran of the security section in the 1940s when its energies had to be directed simultaneously against the IRA and Nazi intelligence agents, half a dozen of whom were sent to Ireland to link up with the IRA.²

In Dublin, the Special Detective Unit (SDU), led by Detective Superintendent Michael Gill, had built a sizeable bank of intelligence on the IRA. They had plenty of time to prepare. In September 1953 the London-based Empire News had claimed that a new IRA offensive was in preparation and that Superintendent Gill had a ‘high ranking spy’ in the IRA for ‘many years’.

Gill sued Empire News but the High Court did not entertain his allegation of libel. Arguably, it might have been a more substantive defamation had it suggested that the head of the Special Branch did not have a ‘high ranking spy’ in the IRA.

In the country, local Special Branch units, supported by uniformed gardaí, rounded up about 60 IRA men for detention in the Curragh Internment Camp. There were seizures of arms, ammunition and explosives in an operation that started on July 8th 1957. An estimated 400 gardaí were sent north to reinforce the Border divisions. New equipment, including short-wave radio for patrol cars, was hurriedly installed along a line from Donegal to Louth.³

When the Costello government fell, Fianna Fáil, still led by 72-year-old Éamon de Valera, returned to power. The new government was no less determined to suppress the IRA. In the autumn of 1961 the Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey, reintroduced the military courts which had operated in the period from 1939 to 1945. Peter Berry travelled to Belfast to coordinate security measures with Stormont officials.

But while the gardaí came down hard on the IRA, they limited the extent of their cooperation with the RUC. When a garda raiding party came across a list of IRA units within Northern Ireland with the names of key personnel, it was quickly brought to the Depot and buried in C3. There was no question of sharing it with Belfast, where its content would have been highly valued.⁴

On February 26th 1962 the IRA announced that the campaign was ended. Within months, the few IRA men remaining in detention were turned loose. The garda deployment along the Border was reversed. In places, the prized radio equipment was dismantled and brought to the Depot for storage.

Not many of those outside of the State law enforcement system appreciated the difficulties of the task faced by the Garda Síochána during the IRA campaign. There was little understanding of how unfit the force had been in some respects to discharge that task.

Costigan would have had a realistic sense of the situation. Like his predecessor, Michael Kinnane, who had started his working life as a Crown civil servant in London, he was not a career policeman. He had been a civil servant since leaving school, rising relatively quickly to the rank of Assistant Secretary at the Department of Justice. A native of Bantry, County Cork, he had been appointed as Commissioner, aged 41, in July 1952, while Gerald Boland was Minister for Justice. He was intelligent, open-minded and aware that his ageing force, largely recruited in the 1920s and 1930s, faced serious organisational challenges for the future.

Its operational capacities had been steadily run down since the end of World War II when both internal and external threats to the State receded.

Simultaneously, Army Intelligence (G2) had been scaled down, with primacy for internal security now firmly with the Garda Síochána. Virtually all G2’s ‘subversive’ files had been transferred to C3 at the Depot. In 1950 the Garda Síochána was 7,166 strong. By 1960 it had fallen to 6,514. Almost 60 stations had been closed, while 50 others were reduced to sub-stations where a single guard worked alone.⁵

Many of those who had formed the earliest generation of gardaí were still serving, now in their late 50s and 60s. The senior officer corps at Headquarters and throughout the divisions had few younger men. There had been some recruitment in the war years, principally through the ‘Taca Síochána’, a cohort of about 300 recruits, envisaged originally as a temporary support. A few Taca men had begun to move through the intermediate ranks as vacancies arose, usually through deaths.⁶

There was no recruitment from 1943 to 1952, when cautious recruitment got under way in order to make up for retirements. There was a plentiful pool of potential recruits in a country with few employment prospects. A total of 1,126 men applied in 1952, of whom just 174 were selected for training.

In 1959 the first 12 women – ban ghardaí – were attested, realising one of Costigan’s objectives. The Royal Ulster Constabulary had started recruiting women in 1946.

As he faced into his final year in office, Commissioner Costigan could also feel reasonably satisfied that discontent among the younger ranks of his force had been contained at least for the present.

In November 1961, younger gardaí had effectively bypassed the existing negotiating machinery provided through the Representative Bodies to protest against their exclusion from a pay rise awarded to more senior members.

A meeting planned for November 4th at the Macushla Ballroom on Amiens Street in Dublin, a well-known dancing venue, was proscribed by the Garda authorities. But hundreds of guards turned up nonetheless. A superintendent and a number of inspectors took the names of about 160 men who were served with disciplinary notices, charging them with discreditable conduct.⁷

In turn, a ‘go-slow’ was initiated in Dublin, with young gardaí declining to enforce traffic and street-trading regulations. The Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey, appeared to give ground, announcing that he would review the existing negotiation machinery and, if necessary, overhaul it. But on the same day, Costigan dismissed 11 supposed ringleaders from the force.

Ten days later, after an intervention by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid, the 11 men were reinstated and the crisis abated. By unhappy coincidence, the wife of Assistant Commissioner William P. Quinn, who headed the force’s ‘B’ (personnel) Branch, was killed in a traffic accident during the course of the dispute.

The Macushla ‘revolt’ was a watershed in relations between rank-and-file gardaí and their authorities. The largely docile Representative Bodies became strengthened in confidence and more assertive in their demands for improved pay and conditions. Garda John Marrinan (28), from Clare, one of the 11 dismissed by Costigan, was elected as General Secretary of the Representative Body for Guards (RBG). He set about putting its operations on a professional footing, learning from the modus operandi of the trade unions and following the example of the Police Federation of England and Wales. He was to serve as General Secretary until 1989.

But Commissioner Costigan was already beginning to show the strain of more than a decade in his post. Events, notably the Macushla revolt, were taking their toll as he moved into his 50s.

Costigan was by inclination a moderniser, a contrast, according to Garda historian Gregory Allen, to the conservative senior officers he commanded.⁸ He was a good decade younger than most of the men who formed his immediate staff at the Depot, and as such he did not share their institutional memory of the dangerous 1920s or the struggles with Blueshirts and IRA in the 1930s.

He sought to develop his force as much as budgetary constraints would permit, initiating a series of early organisational surveys using consultants Unwick Orr and Partners.

The Technical Bureau was expanded and provided with new equipment, including infrared scanners that could read the numbers filed off the frames of stolen bicycles; bicycle theft was a frequent occurrence in an otherwise essentially crime-free society. Police dogs were introduced in 1960 with the first canine ‘recruits’ coming from Britain. An Organisation and Methods office was established in 1956. Costigan insisted that the new female gardaí be seen on the streets in uniform and not merely assigned to office duties or other indoor work.

He established a Crime Prevention Unit for the Dublin Metropolitan Division. He was keen to expand the force’s radio communications system but the finance was not forthcoming to extend it much beyond the principal cities and some larger towns. One of his early initiatives had been to have the old-fashioned, high-necked uniform replaced with the more modern, open-necked model that was now the norm in police forces elsewhere. He encouraged young gardaí to live among the community rather than in the institutional atmosphere of the barracks. He supported the right of gardaí to vote in Dáil and presidential elections, a privilege which they had been denied until the passage of the Electoral Act 1960.

The Garda Review complimented Costigan in 1959 during a tour of Border stations: ‘What most favourably impressed our members was the genuine nature of the Commissioner’s solicitude for their well-being and welfare.’⁹

He was active in his support for Coiste Siamsa, the force’s organising body for sport. He understood something of public relations, even though the term was not widely used in the public service. He could make a virtue of necessity. Although Garda cars had no warning lights or sirens, he declared that this was in keeping with the low-key role of the force in Irish society.

One of the most far-reaching innovations of his Commissionership was the establishment in September 1963 of the Juvenile Liaison Scheme. Young offenders (under 17 years) could now in certain cases be diverted from the courts system and dealt with by way of caution from a superintendent and with ongoing supervision by a garda. In time, the system of Juvenile Liaison Officers was extended throughout the State and proved to be a highly successful instrument in preventing young people from engaging in further criminality. By 1968, five years after its inception, almost 4,500 young people had been processed through the scheme.¹⁰

Ireland was changing, slowly but surely evolving from the rural isolation that had left it developmentally and economically behind most countries of Western Europe.

The drabness of life in a poor country with a stagnant economy was relieved throughout the 1950s by occasional visits from international figures. In 1952, John Ford came to film The Quiet Man in the West of Ireland with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. In 1961 there was excitement at the visit of Prince Rainier of Monaco and his bride, the Irish-American screen actress, Grace Kelly. The country was fascinated by these exotic visitors whose every action was reported in the press. In 1963 the streets were lined with onlookers to welcome US President John F. Kennedy.

By 1960 the economy was on a pathway to growth. Employment grew, as did enrolments in secondary and third-level education. Living standards rose. Irish people began to holiday and travel abroad in greater numbers. Communications improved and the numbers of motor vehicles both private and commercial increased.¹¹

The role of the garda also began to change. The somnolent lives of the party of guards in a small station were increasingly punctuated by the requirement to attend at and investigate road traffic accidents, which often involved an excess of alcohol. Public order incidents became more frequent at some of the festivals and musical events that were now being staged around the country.

The 1961 Road Traffic Act introduced a system of ‘on-the-spot’ fines for certain offences in the principal cities. In 1963, speed limits were introduced on all roads. Radar-based speed detection equipment was issued to each Division.

By and large, the gardaí adapted to the changes, in spite of reduced numbers, a paucity of modern equipment and without any significant overhaul of training. As the force aged, men in their 50s were less vigorous and less healthy, reducing the policing man hours available. When the United Nations opened recruitment for its policing service in 1956 an exodus of recently recruited gardaí started. Over the next four years, more than 500 left, seeing better prospects with the UN.

Most districts had just one official car without any equipment other than a small fire extinguisher and an illuminated roof sign. It was not until 1963 that gardaí on night duty were issued with a reflective safety belt. Even the Special Branch, always favoured in equipment and resources, were neglected. While European forces were converting to semi-automatic firearms, the standard Special Branch issue remained the .38 Webley revolver and the occasional World War II Thompson sub-machine gun.

The post-war years in Britain, with rapidly rising crime rates, had seen a concerted effort by the Home Office to raise entry standards to the police and to imbue the service with modern leadership and management techniques.

Britain’s Police College was established at Bramshill in Hampshire in 1948, aiming to provide officers destined for senior ranks with the equivalent of what military officers gained at Sandhurst. A programme was provided under which university graduates could progress to the rank of inspector after five years of service, the first two of which had to be spent on the beat.

None of this thinking was applied to the Garda Síochána, although in 1959 Costigan initiated a programme to second rising inspectors for short courses at Bramshill. The first two were Patrick McLaughlin, a future Commissioner, and Sean Sheehan, later an Assistant Commissioner. Afterwards, two or three men were sent each year either to Bramshill or to the Scottish police training centre at Tulliallan.

In 1963 Costigan selected 39-year-old Superintendent Eamonn Doherty (later Commissioner) to attend two courses at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) academy then located in Washington DC.

The placement was initiated by the US Ambassador in Dublin, Matthew McCloskey, who was concerned that the Gardaí did not have skills to enable them to search Cuba-bound aircraft transiting through Shannon. Although Peter Berry was sceptical about the idea, not least on grounds of cost, it was approved by the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass. Doherty would be the first of many senior gardaí to be rotated through FBI training.¹²

But all garda ranks continued to be filled from among those who entered at basic grade. The entrance examination for the force was pitched at third-grade primary level. In practice, many recruits had education well beyond that. But there was no fast track to promotion for entrants with superior qualifications. Although some gardaí took night degrees, there was no graduate intake at recruitment level, other than one or two who had been studying for the priesthood and who had been enrolled to study at university.

The number of crimes was low. But where there was any degree of premeditation or where serious attempts were made by culprits to cover their tracks, the guards’ success rate sometimes faltered.

In November 1958 a Kerry farmer, Maurice Moore, was murdered near Rathmore, County Kerry in a dispute over land. Nobody was ever made amenable although local people knew the identity and the motivation of the killer. The case was subsequently used by the writer John B. Keane as the basis of his play The Field.

In April 1961, a petrol pump attendant, Harry Cahill, was murdered in the course of a night-time robbery at the Iona Garage on the north side of Dublin. The following June, a six-year-old boy, Tommy Powell, was beaten to death in a cemetery in the Liberties area of the city. In neither case was anyone made amenable.

The 1963 murder of Cecilia McEvoy at the Heath, near Portlaoise, was never satisfactorily cleared up. A suspect who had been questioned throughout the night was found the following morning, drowned in a bog near Mountmellick. He had not been ill-treated and the gardaí treated the case as closed. But rumours and allegations continued.¹³

There were successes nonetheless. In September 1967 the body of an unknown woman was found at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. Painstaking investigations identified her as Maria Domenech, a Puerto Rican living in the US who had entered the country through Shannon Airport. A murder inquiry ended when, with police closing in, the chief suspect took his own life in Florida.

The Garda Síochána had been functioning with at least one hand tied behind its back by comparison with other police forces in Common Law jurisdictions. In the case of Dunne v Clinton (1930) the courts had held that Irish law did not permit detention for the purposes of questioning (other than in cases involving the Offences against the State Act.) Thus even if a suspect was identified, there was little likelihood of self-incrimination at interview.

With three years to retirement age, Costigan was increasingly isolated in the Depot. Gregory Allen cites a meeting at which one of his senior officers told him bluntly that he was not welcome.¹⁴ He was virtually without allies either among his own senior officers or at the Department of Justice from which he had been appointed.

His acceptance of the Commissionership in July 1952 had turned out to be a poisoned chalice. He had started his civil service career in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and had been one of a number of bright, ambitious young men recruited to the Department of Justice by Stephen Roche, Secretary from 1934 to 1949.

In 1952, Costigan was an Assistant Secretary to Thomas Coyne who succeeded Roche. His brief was Division 1, which included the administrative oversight of the Garda Síochána. Coyne was to serve until his retirement in 1961. Peter Berry, also from County Cork, was a grade behind Costigan, serving as a Principal Officer.

The death in 1952 of Commissioner Michael Kinnane seemed to open a doorway of opportunity for the ambitious Daniel Costigan. He had no immediate prospect of advancement within the Department, but he could make his mark – and improve his pay – as Commissioner of the Gardaí.

The appointment was solely in the gift of the government. Experience of police work was not a prerequisite. Of the four previous Commissioners, only one, Eamonn Broy, had seen service as a police officer.

As Assistant Secretary Costigan had been a key member of an interdepartmental committee set up by the Minister for Justice Seán MacEoin in 1950 on the organisation and strength of the Garda Síochána.¹⁵

The committee was to consider ‘whether any reorganisation’ might be desirable. This resulted in the abolition of the station orderly system, whereby the public office had to be manned round the clock in smaller stations, thus releasing a considerable amount of patrolling manpower. The committee recommended the shedding of many non-policing duties, such as the collection of agricultural statistics. The committee experience helped to sharpen Costigan’s sense of the force’s needs and of the challenges it would face as the early generation of gardaí came up to retirement.

But his arrival at the Depot dismayed senior headquarters officers who had, not unreasonably, hoped that one of their own would be appointed, with a consequent sequence of promotions down through the hierarchy. There was at best a cold acceptance of the new Commissioner’s authority. Few friendships developed out of it.

Relations with some of his former colleagues in the Department became equally difficult, especially after 1961 when Berry succeeded Coyne as Secretary. While Costigan was Commissioner he stood ahead of Berry in the pecking order, but once Berry ascended to the secretaryship at the age of 51 he became Costigan’s superior in the administration.

The Commissioner might have a notional independence as a government-appointed officer of State. But the Secretary of the Department was the de facto day-to-day link between him and the political power. Moreover, the Secretary was the Accounting Officer for the force which meant that the Commissioner had no independent financial authority.

There were accounts of clashes between the two men. One anecdote that circulated in the Department had Berry returning an early letter to Costigan because it opened with a collegial ‘Dear Berry’ rather than the ‘Dear Secretary’ that he believed to be appropriate to his more elevated position. Later files in the archives however show Costigan continuing to address the Secretary as ‘Berry’.

After President Kennedy’s visit in August, Costigan received a letter from Kennedy thanking him and three senior officers – Assistant Commissioner Michael Wymes, Chief Superintendent Jim Moore of C3 and Chief Superintendent Philip McMahon of Special Branch – as well as the force as a whole, for their work in protecting him.

Costigan drafted a reply which he sent to Haughey for clearance, along with a request that the President’s letter be published in the Garda Review. Berry was furious and forwarded a memo to Haughey expressing his dismay that a head of state should write directly to ‘a public servant’, thus ‘exalting’ him. He recommended that the Commissioner’s request to publish the letter be refused, which it was.¹⁶

Costigan’s relations with Haughey were also difficult. Contemporary recollections among senior civil servants at the Department are of Haughey frequently being critical and dismissive of the Commissioner.

Haughey had proven himself a progressive Minister for Justice. In 1964 he introduced legislation abolishing the death penalty for murder in most cases. He was instrumental in appointing liberal judges, with Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh becoming Chief Justice and Brian Walsh joining the Supreme Court in 1961.

But by early 1965 Costigan was under strain. The stress of dealing with a difficult Minister, an unsympathetic Department and a resentful officer corps at the Depot began to tell.

In February 1965 word began to spread among the senior ranks at headquarters that the Commissioner would be replaced. The new Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, who had succeeded Haughey in November 1964, and some other younger members of the Cabinet were of the view that it was time to make an appointment from within the force. It was felt that it would be good for morale if every garda felt that he might aspire to the very top. It would also provide a significant opportunity for patronage. Not surprisingly, informal soundings with the Representative Bodies indicated that they were positive about the idea.

Lenihan would have had personal exposure to the sentiments within the senior ranks in regard to the Commissionership. He had married Anne Devine, the daughter of Superintendent (later Chief Superintendent) Joseph Devine, district officer in Lenihan’s native Athlone.

When it became known that Costigan had expressed a wish to retire, the expectation was that the appointment would go to Deputy Commissioner Patrick Carroll. A native of County Laois, he was a widely experienced officer, having served as a superintendent in the C3 Security Section during the period of the Emergency and as head of the Section during the IRA’s Border campaign.

He had qualified as a barrister and was the author of The Garda Síochána Guide, a textbook on the criminal law and procedures which had become an indispensable aid not just for gardaí but for lawyers operating in the criminal courts. Confident and outgoing, he was active in the Irish Olympic Council and was to serve as its president from 1973 to 1976, as had two previous Commissioners, Eoin O’Duffy (1929–1933) and Eamonn Broy (1930–1950).

The other Deputy Commissioner, William P. Quinn, though senior in his appointment to Carroll, was within weeks of his retirement date. Arrangements were in train among his headquarters colleagues for his stand-down and presentation.

But when the government’s choice was announced it was Quinn who was to succeed Costigan. Costigan moved to a civil service job within the Department of Justice to enable him to reach full pensionability. Meanwhile, an extension order was made to Quinn’s service to enable him to remain on for two years.

The government’s choice was logical, if cautious. Both men had been appointed as superintendents at the foundation of the force and had served as district officers in the troubled early years. But Quinn was slightly ahead of Carroll on the seniority list. He was, as Lenihan pointed out, the most senior officer in the force after the Commissioner.

Yet Carroll was undoubtedly the more widely qualified man. His involvement in the Olympic Council gave him something of a national profile. Quinn was arguably a safer bet from the viewpoint of both the government and the Department of Justice. He was a quiet man whose gentle demeanour belied a strong character (he had been hand-picked by O’Duffy in 1929 to replace the murdered Superintendent Sean Curtin in Tipperary).¹⁷

Quinn’s Commissionership lasted just two years and was uneventful. He retired in March 1967, at which point Carroll was given the job for just 18 months, retiring in September 1968.

The principle of appointing Commissioners from within the force was now established, albeit that the two appointments heretofore were of senior officers on the cusp of retirement.

The third Commissioner appointed from within the ranks was Michael Wymes, who had been Carroll’s Deputy. Wymes was to serve for almost four and a half years to January 1973. But his commissionership was no gentle sinecure. The twin storms of rank-and-file garda discontent and political violence, long threatened, were about to break.

NOTES:

1. Report of the Garda Commissioner on Crime 1964 .

2. Enno Stephan, trans. Arthur Davison, Spies in Ireland (Four Square Books, 1965); a detailed account of the Irish counter-intelligence mechanisms 1939–1945.

3. Author interview with late Chief Superintendent James Moore.

4. Ibid.

5. Gregory Allen, The Garda Síochána, Policing Independent Ireland 1922 - 1982 (Gill & Macmillan, 1999), Ch. 10.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Irish Times , May 7th 1959.

10. Report of the Garda Commissioner on Crime 1968 .

11. Statistical Abstract of Ireland ( 1960–1970).

12. Department of Justice Papers 2005/147/171 (National Archives)

13. Author interview with former detective engaged in McEvoy case.

14. Allen, op. cit. The author encountered several versions of this incident during interviews.

15. Department of Justice, Report of Committee on the Garda Síochána (internal document) (1950).

16. Author interview with former civil servant.

17. Superintendent Sean Curtin was murdered by the IRA at Friarsfield, Tipperary on March 30th 1929. He was the only member of superintendent rank to be murdered on duty.

Chapter 2

CONROY: THE WATERSHED

‘We are satisfied from the evidence that pay and conditions are only part of the problem.’

– CONROY REPORT, 1969

Aperiod of standoff between the Garda Representative Bodies and their authorities had followed the 1961 ‘Macushla Revolt’ over pay.

New regulations promulgated by Haughey in 1962 gave the Bodies stronger rights of audience. But as older gardaí retired in increasing numbers to be replaced by younger recruits the gap between employee expectations and conditions of service grew wider.

The General Secretary of the RBG, Jack Marrinan, professionalised his organisation’s activities. He retained a young economist, Garret FitzGerald, as an advisor and sought, as much as possible, to borrow useful ideas from the trade unions.

But with one claim after another rejected in the years after the Macushla incident, gardaí believed they were losing ground vis-à-vis other employee groups. There was, moreover, growing resentment at the enforcement of the outdated disciplinary code and at the long, often unpredictable hours of duty.

The social and economic context within which the Gardaí was operating was changing rapidly. As T. K. Whitaker’s plans for economic growth gained traction through the 1960s, living standards increased and working conditions improved. There was rapid growth in house building, car ownership and foreign travel. Free secondary education came in 1966. The universities expanded their capacities and student numbers grew.¹

The RBG, using a comparative analysis prepared by FitzGerald, argued that Garda pay did not reflect the increasingly specialised work of a police officer or the unsocial and demanding requirements of the job. But the Department of Finance remained unmoved. Whenever recruitment for the force opened up, the numbers of suitable applicants always exceeded the numbers of vacancies.

Gardaí could be required to work unlimited hours without any overtime pay. Leave entitlements amounted to two days per month. In contrast, the RUC had a fixed working week of 42 hours since 1967, brought in as part of a modernising programme directed by Chief Constable Albert Kennedy.²

The Disciplinary Code regulated virtually every aspect of a member’s life. Single guards could be compelled to live in barracks. A guard spending the night in a girlfriend’s flat could be disciplined for bringing the force into disrepute. Failure to maintain one’s uniform could result in a fine. Any querying of superior authority could bring a charge of indiscipline.

Many of the men promoted to supervisory ranks in these years took a flexible view of the regulations. But others, promoted rapidly without the benefit of extended training for their new roles, lacked experience and confidence. Conditioned to obey rather than lead, they sometimes enforced the disciplinary regulations to the letter, adding to resentment among the rank and file.

The new Training Centre at Templemore, opened in February 1964, was now processing a steady stream of new recruits. But this only kept pace with the loss of senior members through retirement and death. The authorised strength of the force remained at 6,514 through the decade, down from 7,177 in 1950. Meanwhile, the crime figures began to climb upward, with indictable crime passing 20,000 for the first time in 1968 and with a detection rate of 64 per cent.³

There was still little professional crime. But the force’s capacity to deal with it suffered a reverse in 1966 when the Supreme Court changed the rules on the granting of bail to accused persons.

The Court ruled (The People v. O’Callaghan) that an accused person could not be denied bail merely because the Gardaí believed he would commit further crimes if freed.⁴ This was preventive detention. Henceforth an accused person could only be denied bail if the court accepted that there was a risk of flight or of interference with witnesses. This position was subsequently confirmed in 1989 in the case of Ryan v. The State (DPP).⁵

O’Callaghan had been refused bail in the Dublin District Court on charges of larceny, breaking and entering, resisting arrest and assault, offences allegedly committed while he was already on bail. He appealed the decision to the High Court where it was upheld by Mr Justice Murnaghan.

Superintendent Michael Costello told the court that O’Callaghan was ‘an aggressive type’ and was likely to interfere with witnesses if freed.

But the Supreme Court (Justices Ó Dálaigh, Walsh and Budd) took a contrary view, holding that ‘bail cannot be refused merely because there is the likelihood of the commission of further offences while on bail, as that is a form of preventive justice unknown to our legal system and contrary to the true purpose of bail.’

The judgment reflected a liberalisation of the Supreme Court that took place in the 1960s. Ó Dálaigh, Chief Justice from 1961 to 1973, and Walsh, a member of the court from 1961 to 1990, were greatly influenced by the evolution of constitutional jurisprudence in the United States under Chief Justice Warren (1953–1969).

Many bailed criminals reasoned that the period before trial was a time to exploit opportunities. In the end, even if convicted of a number of crimes, sentences were usually applied to run concurrently. So no real penalty had to be paid for further crimes committed while on bail.

In 1979 the Garda Review was to comment; ‘Suspects are brought in accused of robbery, shooting, rapes, stabbings and even murder. Within hours they are loose again, with trial only a dim and distant prospect, many months ahead of them.’⁶

Extra demands also began to be placed on the force as public demonstrations became more common. The 1966 commemoration of the Easter Rising saw marches and parades in Dublin with gardaí and republicans coming to blows. An unruly march in Grafton Street in Dublin after Easter 1966 led to baton charges and injuries among gardaí and marchers.

Student protests in 1967 and 1968 were also marked by confrontation with gardaí. The gardaí had no protective equipment and no training in the handling of public order situations. Some over-reacted and blood was drawn. SDU officers singled out leaders and organisers and batoned them. Damning press photographs and critical editorial comment did little to help police morale.

The Garda Síochána appeared to be caught in a time warp. The force’s image was not modernised as society changed.

There was further adverse publicity in 1964 when gardaí were found to be moonlighting on security duty in Dunnes Stores in Dublin and were accused of using oppressive and illegal methods against young female staff members who had been accused of stealing by management.

In 1967, Liam O’Mahoney from Turner’s Cross, Cork, died in a garda cell in the city after being arrested while drunk. A frail man, described as ‘inoffensive’, there were allegations that he had been beaten. The Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, at first refused to allow an inquiry but eventually yielded to pressure in the Dáil from Cork deputies. A judicial inquiry did not identify any wrongdoing by the gardaí.

It was widely understood that political influence operated in the promotions system. An examination of senior promotions in the 1960s shows many clear links to the Fianna Fáil organisation. Conversely, in the periods of coalition government, men with connections to Fine Gael in particular, were promoted. It was hardly surprising, given that the legislation provided that commissioned appointments (superintendent and above) were to be made by the government.

Early in 1983, the Garda Review editorial said:

Scant as the effect of political interference in Garda promotions may be, it is not unusual for members of the force to seek the support of politicians when seeking higher office. It is not unusual either for politicians to give the impression to prospective candidates that they have ‘put in a good word’ for them.⁷

The political establishment saw the force as a source of patronage. In office, many saw nothing improper in exercising power over gardaí on duty.

‘Do you want a pint or a transfer?’ Brian Lenihan was reputed to have asked a guard who found him drinking after closing hours in a Dublin hotel. The story may have been apocryphal, embellishing Lenihan’s colourful reputation, but it was widely and approvingly retailed in political circles.

There was little hesitation about interfering with the Commissioner’s prerogatives if it suited the political wind.

In the summer of 1966, after a motorcycle garda had been savagely attacked and stabbed with a screwdriver, Lenihan announced that he had been promoted overnight to sergeant. In 1970, after the murder of Garda Fallon, the government announced that one of his brothers who had not met the Commissioner’s entry requirements was to be brought to Templemore for training and attestation. (In the event, he left, realising that he had been earning considerably more money in the building industry.)

Matters came to a head in the summer of 1968 when a new pay round was due to be awarded to various public servants including gardaí. The Labour Court determined that the pay of a full-time Dublin city fireman should be equivalent to that of a garda.

The Representative Bodies resented the equating of police work to firefighting. Commissioner Patrick Carroll sided with them and publicly rejected the comparison. At the same time, regional branches of the RBG threatened industrial action. Ad hoc meetings of gardaí passed resolutions calling for government action on their pay. Opposition spokesmen in the Dáil supported the demands for a better deal for the force.

The Bodies requested a meeting with the Minister, Ó Móráin. It was an opportunity to set out the depth of frustration among their members.

In October he 1968 announced that the government was establishing a Commission of Inquiry into Garda remuneration and conditions of service, to be chaired by Judge John C. (‘Charlie’) Conroy of the Circuit Court. The other members of the Commission were Thomas Noonan, President of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland; Gerard Quinn, a UCD economist; Ivor Kenny, head of the Irish Management Institute (IMI) and former Garda Commissioner William P. Quinn.

The RBG under Marrinan had already professionalised its approach to negotiation. The body representing the middle ranks, the awkwardly titled ‘Representative Body for Sergeants, Station Sergeants and Inspectors’ (RBISS) now followed suit under a new General Secretary, Thomas J. O’Reilly, later to be Deputy Commissioner.

Marrinan and O’Reilly formed a pragmatic alliance to exploit the opportunity provided by the establishment of the Commission. They had some important things in common. Both were university graduates (Marrinan from Trinity, O’Reilly from UCD), which was very unusual in the Garda Síochána of the 1960s. Both had international police contacts outside of Ireland. Marrinan respected O’Reilly’s considerable intellect. O’Reilly acknowledged Marrinan’s skills in negotiation and networking.

The written submissions of the Representative Bodies were detailed, researched and supported throughout with comparative data.⁸ In contrast, the arguments put up by the Department of Justice and the Department of Finance, in almost every case opposing change, were heavily reliant on precedent.

The case argued by the Representative Bodies found a ready ally on the Commission in management expert, Ivor Kenny.

Kenny, married to the daughter of a former garda, had a keen interest in the force. The IMI was engaged in the modernisation of Irish industry and business. He knew that the Garda Síochána was a stranger to most of the new methodologies of management that were taught at the Institute and that were now becoming the norm in successful organisations.

The 1962 regulations provided for three Representative Bodies; RBG, RBISS and the Representative Body for Chief Superintendents and Superintendents (RBCSS). All three bodies meeting together were recognised as the Joint Representative Body (JRB).

In making submissions to the Commission, the individual bodies focused predictably on the pay and conditions of their own members. But operating as the JRB they made a series of far-reaching statements concerned with the management and development of the force for the future.

These went beyond the immediate issues of pay and working conditions. They sought to recast the Garda Síochána as a modern police organisation, informed by international best practice and removed from the traditional quasi-military model that had been inherited from the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1922.

The JRB knew that the civil servants from Justice and Finance would argue that such matters lay outside the Commission’s terms of reference, as they probably did.

‘We submit that in order to carry out its task properly and efficiently in the future the Garda Síochána will have to make more and better use of modern knowledge and techniques,’ the JRB argued.

Inviting the Commission to make ‘firm recommendations as to the type, calibre and educational standard’ required for the force, the JRB asked that it also ‘establish that the office of policeman should carry considerable respect and status commensurate with the high responsibilities and important functions of his office’.

The JRB requested the establishment of a ‘properly staffed and equipped’ research and development unit at headquarters, the adoption of the ‘unit beat’ system as in the United Kingdom and the abolition of the Garda Síochána’s distinction between ‘officers’ (superintendents and above) and ‘men’. It requested the appointment of a liaison officer between the force and the Department of Justice, ideally at chief superintendent rank. In other, more prosaic submissions, it requested the fitting of safety belts in Garda cars as well as better, more modern vehicles.

The JRB submissions to Conroy and those of the RBG and RBISS were qualitatively different from the pay-focused claims of the past. It was a clever strategy. By emphasising the structural and organisational anachronisms under which the force had to operate, it had the potential to secure a whole new deal for gardaí at all levels.

There was periodic unrest during 1969, notably in the Dublin Metropolitan Area. In August, gardaí in the G District (Crumlin and Sundrive Road) protested against the disciplinary regime of the local superintendent, Michael Fitzgerald, and