Harris shocked by report saying some traffic Gardaí 'openly hostile' towards job

Irish Daily Mirror

3 days ago

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris says he has been left shocked by a damning report that found some roads policing officers have a brazen disregard for their duties.
'It is shocking and very worrying,' the Commissioner said on Thursday - after details of the report emerged.
The Garda report was presented to the independent oversight body, the Policing and Community Safety Authority, in June - and revealed that some traffic Gardaí have no interest in their specialist jobs.
It was ordered by Commissioner Harris earlier this year after he received an anonymous report from a whistleblower about elements of the roads policing operation around the country.
The findings of that examination have been described as "shocking" by Mr Harris and the chairwoman of the PCSA, Dr Elaine Byrne, at a public meeting in Dublin on Thursday.
Dr Byrne said the authority received the report in June and said it found some Gardaí involved in roads policing showed a "blatant disregard" for their job 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 Síochána. Drew Harris and Elaine Byrne
She added: "There are members within roads policing who seem very much disinterested in their job and this is something that we are concerned about in terms of performance of individual guards. And it's something that the previous authority have looked upon and the current authority would have concerns about the absence of performance management within the Gardaí.'
She said the authority was also "shocked" at a "fear" of performance management within the Gardaí.
She urged the Garda Commissioner to publish the report in due course, which Mr Harris said they would do once they ensured no one is identifiable.
"What I'll undertake to do is we just do one final read through the report. I just want to be sure nobody's identifiable and then we can issue the report," he said.
"It did arise from anonymous correspondence that I received, obviously from a roads policing member, and although anonymous, it had certainly a ring of authenticity about that."
He said he asked for an examination of the work done by roads policing members and a working group is going through various recommendations. Harris said he wants to ensure nobody in the report is identifiable
The Commissioner said: "The reason this is important is there's been a lot of focus on roads policing numbers, but also obviously, then the impact of enforcement on road deaths and seriously injured.
"It's sobering to say the least in terms of its conclusions.
'It is shocking and very worrying. We were not pleased to see this report and see the conclusions within it.'
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