Probationer gardaí with little experience of investigations were ‘hung out to dry’ by Garda management as, it has been claimed. A rank-and-file Garda leader said the Guerin report showed that inexperienced officers were “forsaken, betrayed and pilloried by those who had a duty of care towards them”.
Garda Representative Association general secretary PJ Stone said “there are lessons to be learned from Bailieborough” and that there are also irregularities in Garda management that require explanation.
A Garda Review editorial said it was vital a planned full inquiry was given structure, a timeframe and terms of reference, and expeditiously progress to ensure current “unfair” speculation about some members — now identified countrywide through the grapevine — should not fester further.
The editorial said everyone concerned was under no illusion of the broader scope of what was to come.
“The Guerin report itself draws inferences from extremely limited data that needs to be further expanded and expounded upon before the broad-brush strokes can be authenticated.
“The report raises many serious questions that must be answered by Garda management; how so many probationer gardaí were assigned to a district headquarters station in Bailieborough that did not have the appropriate training and professional development capabilities.
“And, subsequently, how much access to qualified training sergeants was available to these members?”
Mr Stone says: “The answers to these questions are core to providing the structural safeguards to the future of policing.”
Despite a training sergeant putting on record that a probationer garda ‘received little or no supervision from his supervisory sergeant’, the note appeared not to have merited the close attention of Garda management.
The GRA refers to Guerin’s discovery: the common line in all of the Garda investigations showed the original inquiries had been dealt with by inexperienced probationer gardaí with little, or none, of the appropriate supervisory or management guidance.
Experienced detectives would, in any other Garda division, normally have investigated all of the cases but over a period of 20 years, no permanent detectives had been appointed in the Cavan-Monaghan division.
“This has not been highlighted by Guerin — but is an irregularity that needs explanation,” said the editorial. “Time and again Guerin notes ‘poor guidance and leadership’ and surprise that not only were matters of gravity left entirely in the hands of inexperienced probationer gardaí — but that the only disciplinary proceedings were against those inexperienced probationer gardaí.”
Mr Stone said, too often, the report pointed to the absence of proper management: “Now, when the organisation has been widely criticised, it is the junior members involved who have been most affected. In truth, they have been forsaken, betrayed and pilloried by those who had a duty of care towards them.”
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