Grieving father's disgust as report finds some gardaí ‘openly hostile' to roads policing duties

Irish Independent

6 days ago

Vice president of the Irish Road Victims Association, Leo Lieghio, whose 16-year-old daughter Marsia died in 2005, said the findings reveal a 'culture of silence' amongst garda management.
"The report shows that not only did the gardaí fail at their basic duties, speed checks, road testing and drug driving, but they also didn't care,' Mr Lieghio told RTÉ Radio One's Morning Ireland.
"They didn't even care that they were being watched or monitored. That's a complete betrayal of trust.
"And worse still, a culture of silence and fear among the management. The idea that supervisors were too afraid and unwilling to step in.'
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said on Thursday that he received anonymous information before commissioning an examination of how roads policing operations were being carried out.
Mr Lieghio is requesting a meeting with Commissioner Harris and Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan in a quest for 'concrete assurances' that the failings will not be repeated.
"The families of road victims, every innocent person placed at risk by the failures of the Garda and their leadership, deserve the truth, a sincere apology and concrete assurances that this is never going to happen again.'
He expressed hope that incoming Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly, who officially assumes his role from 1 September, can make change happen.
However, Mr Lieghio said he things the system until now cares little for the protection of future road crash victims.
"Even after the crash, even after the funeral, the system still doesn't care enough to protect the next child, the next mother, the next brother,' he said.
The findings of that examination were described as 'shocking' by Commissioner Harris and the chair of the Policing and Community Safety Authority, Elaine Byrne.
'Openly hostile'
She said the authority had received the report in June and that it had found some members showed a 'blatant disregard' for their job, even while they knew their actions were being directly reviewed.
'They were openly hostile to doing their job,' she said, in what she described as a 'wake-up call' for An Garda Síochána.
'There are members within roads policing who seem very much uninterested 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 after a meeting of the authority.
She said the authority had also been 'shocked' by a fear of carrying out performance management among garda managers.
She urged the Garda Commissioner to publish the report in due course, which Mr Harris said he would do soon.
'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 then asked for an examination of the work done by roads policing members and a working group is now going through various recommendations.
'It's sobering to say the least in terms of its conclusions'
'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.'
The Garda Representative Association (GRA) declined to comment.
Seán Canney, Minister of State with responsibility for Transport, said he was surprised to hear of the extent of the failings highlighted by the report.
"From my perspective and from the perspective of the general public I need to ensure that the road safety action plan for the next three years which have put in place will be a plan that will be acted upon,' he said.
Mr Canney, who said he had not yet read the report, said laws must be enforced if the roads are to be truly safer.
"There's no point in us bringing in laws reducing speed limits and doing all of this kind of thing if we don't have a functional enforcement section within the Gardaí,' he also told Morning Ireland on Friday.
It comes as gardaí and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) made a road safety appeal ahead of the August bank holiday weekend.
A half-yearly report has been published by the RSA analysing road deaths from the beginning of this year to July 27.
The findings based on an analysis of 91 road deaths show the number of people killed aged 46 to 65 has reached a six-year high.
By contrast, the number of young people aged 25 and under has fallen year-on-year.
A total of 27pc of road deaths occurred between the hours of 12pm and 4pm, while 26pc occurred between 8pm and 4am when when traffic tends to be lower.
The greatest number of deaths were seen from Friday through Monday, while more than half (56pc) of road deaths occurred on 80kmh and 100kmh roads.
A total of 95 people have died on roads this year to date, including 35 drivers, 22 pedestrians, 17 motorcyclists, eight cyclists, eight passengers and one e-scooter rider.
There has been an increase in deaths among vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.