Nóirín O'Sullivan

D

Dan Murray

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Just heard the Garda Commissioner's statement re. Maurice McCabe.

The Taoiseach may not send an emissary to de house this time but I'd be surprised if she will survive this.

Ad-breaks tonite will certainly be interesting....
 
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Gabh mo leithscéal 's míle buíochas, a duine uasal....
 
Ok - I retract prediction.

Jim O'Callaghan was on the VBrowne show. FF is not going to pursue - JO'C was very impressive at kicking it to touch - walked rings around the panel and an ageing Vincent. Just goes to show the importance of gravitas. I still think the Commissioner should resign or be put out to grass but doubt she will now!
 
I thought Jim was quiet poor....had a script, stuck to it. Avoided answering the questions asked and just kept talking about the future and getting things right then. I actually missed hearing Niall Collins waffling.

Commissioner was a terrible appointment from day1. The last thing we needed as another insider. She had sat shoulder to shoulder with Callinan at the Dail hearings when he called whistleblowers 'disgusting' and referred to the Gardai as 'his force' on several occasions.

But, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but the Commissioner is a woman !
And so her appointment was met with nearly universal approval, her insider-ness! quickly forgotten, and everyone got a warm fuzzy feeling and felt good about Ireland 2015.

Terrible appointment. Sooner gone the better and someone brought in from the US or Australia to bring the Gardai from the 19th into the 21st century
 
Delboy said:
I thought Jim was quiet poor....had a script, stuck to it. Avoided answering the questions asked and just kept talking about the future and getting things right then. I actually missed hearing Niall Collins waffling.


Commissioner was a terrible appointment from day1. The last thing we needed as another insider. She had sat shoulder to shoulder with Callinan at the Dail hearings when he called whistleblowers 'disgusting' and referred to the Gardai as 'his force' on several occasions.


But, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but the Commissioner is a woman !

And so her appointment was met with nearly universal approval, her insider-ness! quickly forgotten, and everyone got a warm fuzzy feeling and felt good about Ireland 2015.
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I agree but there is no point in changing the Commissioner unless the whole structure is changed.


Delboy said:
Terrible appointment. Sooner gone the better and someone brought in from the US or Australia to bring the Gardai from the 19th into the 21st century
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The ideal candidate would be someone from the PSNI who went through the Patton reforms but we may not be mature enough to cope with such a thing. There’s no point in changing the head without changing the body as well. Rank and file Gardai who actually work as police, or Beat Cops as they are known in the USA, are very badly served by their professional and political leaders.
 
Delboy said:
Avoided answering the questions asked and just kept talking about the future and getting things right then.
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I accept this. My sense is that this was his marching orders and he played a terrible hand very well.

I agree with Purple and yourself that fundamental change is necessary - seems like the Police Authority would concur with this also!
 
In large organisations there can be underlying problems - to mention but a few:
  • Managers may have too many roles and/or may be responsible for too many staff members.
  • Inappropriate recruitment criteria
  • Inept promotional systems
  • Insufficient, inappropriate or untimely training interventions
  • Conflicting goals and conflicting instructions
  • Clashing priorities
  • IT systems from hell
  • Failure to monitor and update statistics keeping for current requirements
  • Failure of high-level management understanding of the detail and consequently, difficulties of front-line issues
When situations such as this exist, a culture that no one is effectively watching can be created, usually by a few like-minded individuals, which unchecked spreads until it becomes a pernicious and threatening authority.

To deal with large-scale negligence and incompetence, one has to examine how an organization is managed.

It is not only about strategy, it is about culture and how cultures develop.

Who was it that said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”?
 
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We had Morris Tribunal here in Donegal , and we were promised the (divil knows what),I can,t feel the changes promised?
How can an ordinary Guard have the motivation to do their job well?

It appears that unless whistleblower Mc Cabe had not had the foresight to record things , Garda Senior Management would now be crowing {nothing to see here }.

I have the notion that our Commissioner falls into the {nothing to see category}.
It may well be Sgt Mc Cabe was (as is the normal whisper campaign on whistleblowers) a (cringer).
Even if he is, the question is , was he wrong ?
I want clarity from the commissioner over the 2 senior people who appear to have said he was malicious .

All Big organisations seem to have within them the seeds of their own demise and spout good words but poor actions.

Thus far the Commissioner looks like a (spouter) and that's not fair on us or the Guards...
 
Story unfolding and it appears it will not go away. Reading between the lines in this weekend's newspapers it appears the rot continues and some of the rotten are coming out from stage left. I reckon there's much more to come.
 
{much more to come}
Hope you are wrong and I suspect there isn,t much of great substance to come, its just that the (smell) lingers on all guards.
 
Leper said:
Story unfolding and it appears it will not go away. Reading between the lines in this weekend's newspapers it appears the rot continues and some of the rotten are coming out from stage left. I reckon there's much more to come.
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Wow! - (even back in October 2016) I got that one right . . . . One thing that is heartening for me is that the truth always comes out . . . . and it appears no money will be enough to compensate Sgt McCabe, his wife, his family.

. . . . and it all could have been resolved years ago, if senior Garda Management could just have kept with the truth.
 
My gut instinct tells me there is a lot more yet to come to light and if the reports in the Cork Examiner are correct, then Tusla was being used as a means or a threat to keep Gardaí from complaining, hence any tribunal needs to be broader then simply Garda McCabe. What will be interesting to find out is the level of support Tusla gave the Gardaí management in relation to all of this. My own experience with Tusla(as a volunteer with an organization) is of some good individuals on the ground but serious incompetence at organizational level so nothing would surprise me. Also in relation to the "cut and paste" report error, no one has asked if the child in that original report has had their case dealt with appropriately.
 
Sophrosyne said:
In view of the latest very serious and worrying developments, should not only the commissioner but also the Garda hierarchy stand aside?
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I agree.

Leper said:
Wow! - (even back in October 2016) I got that one right . . . . One thing that is heartening for me is that the truth always comes out . . . . QUOTE]

Fair play regarding your foresight, Leper. I wish it were true about the truth always coming out........
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And we thought Sean Doherty was bad. He only threatened to transfer gardai, oh the innocence of it all.
 
One thing that struck me about all of this in the last week is the complete absence of any input from the GRA. I had a quick look at their mission statement just to see what exactly they do. It states "The ethos of the Garda Representative Association is that collectively we can provide what individually we often cannot attain. It came into being as a vehicle to pursue collectively the best interests of all members of Garda Rank, in the areas of Pay, Welfare, Conditions and Services.". Now call my a cynic but it looks like Welfare got dropped from this unofficially! Wouldn't it be nice if they were shoulder to shoulder with the McCabe family through all of this, fighting the fight on his behalf. Instead the poor man is left to fight alone, completely isolated from his colleagues. Also, the treatment of Supt Taylor leaves a lot to be desired but again, not a whiff of support from the GRA.
Maybe I've got this wrong, maybe they are going to bat for their members, but they're certainly doing it a hell of a lot more quietly than they would if there was a greasy till to fumble in...
 
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