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40 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 41
The GRA president
has said policing in
the Harris era was “all
about meetings, pie
charts and statistics”
I
n mid-September, the Garda Representative
Association, the rank and file of the Garda,
voted 98.4% no-confidence in
Commissioner Harris, ostensibly over roster
disputes, though its leader told reporters
that the decision to ballot members “was not
prompted by a single issue but by an exhaustive
list of concerns” within the ranks.
Harris always stated that whatever the outcome
of the vote, he would not be resigning and
representative bodies for Sergeants and
Inspectors (AGSI) and Superintendents (AGS)
consider the issue of confidence in Harris doesn’t
arise for them though, despite pressure, they
have been pointedly silent over the roster
problems. Harris is facing politically calamitous
withdrawals of service, including withdrawal of
voluntary overtime starting every Tuesday in
October to embrace both the Budget and
Hallowe’en and culminating in the threat to
withdraw labour from 10 November. The
Commissioner has the legal right to order
overtime working but will be loth to force the
issue, Despite the entreaties of the Minister for
Justice, Helen McEntee, that she “wants to be
clear”, and as a politican she can’t intervene, it
isn’t really clear that her patience with her chief
police ocer is solid.
The Garda are under attack. Most recently for
failing to secure the inhabitants of Leinster House
from a predictable assault by right-wing
extremists. More prosaically the Garda are
blamed for a 36% increase in theft for the period
up to the first quarter of 2023, for a near 100%
increase in murders from 24 to 47 for the year to
June and for falsely perceived raised general
rates of violence. Harris claims the series of
recent violent crimes in Dublin’s inner city
“wouldn’t make the headlines in comparable-
sized cities in the UK”. Assaults in public places
in Dublin are marginally lower this year:than both
last year and 2019, though the Garda’s record in
By Michael Smith
statistics-keeping isn’t great and the Central
Statistics urges caution in reading them every
year. Tellingly Harris claimed “in the midst of all
the reporting around the city centre of Dublin”,
he “must not ignore” the huge scale of domestic
violence simply “because those victims are not
in the public domain”.
This Government had a target of increasing the
size of the Garda to 15,000 by 2021, roughly the
number before the pandemic when recruitment
was ceased because of the implausibly alleged
impossibility of using the training collee at
Templemore. The latest statistics show the total
number of gardaí at the end of June was 13,892
– 241 fewer than at the start of 2023. The figures
show the overall number of frontline gardaí has
dropped to 12,009. And retirements are surging.
It’s no harm to remember that under Frances
Fitzgerald (2014-7) the plan was for “21 in 21”,
meaning 21,000 gardaí, including 4000 civilians
by 2021. The personnel deficit accounts for many
of the operational problems.
Still, an extra €10m was allocated by the
Government last month to pay the overtime bill
for an additional 20,000 garda shifts in Dublin
City as part of Operation Citizen, which was set
up to tackle street crime between now and
Christmas.
Harris’s problems are multifarious. Village can
raise a cheer on Twitter by drawing attention to
Harris’s links to UK spookery. In October 2012, in
the final days of public hearings, Harris, then
Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, arrived at
the Smithwick Tribunal, which was investigating
alleged Garda collusion with the IRA, to deliver
last-minute ungraded intelligence about a Garda
who colluded in the murders of Chief
Superintendent Harry Breen, Superintendent Bob
Buchanan and Louth Farmer Tom Oliver, but who
had never been identified to the Tribunal.
Judge Smithwick, a lightweight, used Harris’
intelligence to bolster his collusion verdict. But
Harris’ colluder was entirely dierent to the one
Smithwick had in mind. While Smithwick spun
Harris’ eleventh hour delivery of new ‘intelligence’
as an example of synchronicity of purpose,
privately the Tribunal was devastated. At a
meeting called to read the runes, one senior
Drawing
Drew
Drew Harris is making
news but as usual
and for good reason it
is all bad
GRA President, Brendn O’Connor
Grd Commissioner, with support
POLITICS
40 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 41
counsel, perhaps understandably bewildered,
asked “how could the Brits do this to us, we were
getting on so well?”. Nobody has really
ascertained the purpose of Harris’s shenanigans,
or what MI5, whose o cial liaison with the PSNI
he was, thought to gain from it. Elsewhere in this
magazine [p20] it is suggested that some
falsifi cation of evidence may have been solely to
boost the ego of Peter Keeley, Smithwick’s star
witness.
For a Garda, Harris has a colourful background.
His father, senior RUC o cer Alwyn Harris, was
murdered by the Provisional IRA, in a 1989 car-
bomb on his way to a Harvest Thanksgiving
church service. After the arrest of then Sinn Féin
president Gerry Adams in connection with the
abduction and murder of Jean McConville in
December 1972, Martin McGuinness spoke of “an
embittered rump of the old RUC”. According to the
Belfast Telegraph, “Republicans did not openly
name Drew Harris but, privately, they were
thinking and talking about him”. Nicknamed the
quiet man, the former PSNI Chief Constable Sir
Hugh Orde said Harris was “a very good man,
reliable, a very calm individual”.
Harris had joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) in 1983, rising to become Deputy Chief
Constable of the PSNI in October 2014. In the
PSNI he was responsible for the Crime Operations
Department and is recognised as a national
expert in dealing with high risk covert policing
operations and critical incidents.
He worked in Scotland for two years and held
the UK’s Association of Chief Police O cers Hate
Crime portfolio for eight years, working on
improving the criminal justice response to
victims, detection rates and data collection.
Then, as an Assistant Chief Constable, Harris
took responsibility for the management of sex
offenders and the introduction of Public
Protection Units.
In 1997, Harris got a Degree in Politics and
Economics from the Open University. He
completed a Strategic Command Course in 2004
and a Leadership in International Counter
Terrorism Course in 2006. In 2007, he received a
Master’s degree in Criminology from Cambridge
University. He obtained an (OBE) in 2010 and a
Queen’s Police Medal in 2019.
One RUC o cer expressed surprise to Conor
Lenihan writing in the Sunday Times that Harris
was chosen given his role in the North had largely
been administrative rather than in frontline
policing, but that seems unfair, though much
policing in the North in Harris’s time there would
have been terrorism-related and presumably of
limited transferability.
Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan, once a
great white hope for transparent dynamism,
resigned in September 2017, following a number
of scandals. Her “Modernisation and Reform”
initiative had collapsed when the Commission on
the Future of Policing invested its weight behind
a new Policing Authority.
Following an international selection process,
which included a salary increase to €250,000 to
attract interest, Drew Harris became, in 2018, the
fi rst Commissioner to be appointed from outside
the Garda Síochána. His fi ve-year tenure has
been extended by two years. His credentials as a
no-nonsense reformer were underlined at the
time of his appointment in particular by both
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan and Taoiseach
Leo Varadkar.
Harris is married with four children. He is a
Protestant. Indeed, Alison O’Connor writing in the
Sunday Times made the unlikely and unevidenced
claim that the root of his problems in this
jurisdiction is this. Harris says he thinks of
himself as Irish, has obtained an Irish passport
and has, according to the Irish News, relinquished
his oaths to the UK and Northern Ireland in favour
of oaths to Ireland and the Garda, though some
say oaths under the O cial Secrets Act and to UK
security services are lifetime commitments.
Harris has listed his priorities as establishing
value for money, transparency and the vulnerable.
The list is a little trite as the Garda have long
demanded a strategic not a folksy analysis.
However, the roster dispute and the handling
of overtime are evidence the Garda do not get
good value for money. But reversion to the pre-
Covid ‘Westmanstown’ system on 6 November,
is a nonsense even if it’s for want of agreement
on something better. There are fewer gardaí now,
for a start; and more variation in the times when
gardaí are needed than there were under
lockdowns. The old rotation system was: six days
on, four o , worked in eight-hour shifts, with
seven di erent start times for shifts. Currently
gardaí work four days on, four o worked in
12-hour shifts, starting at 7am or 7pm. Because
shifts are longer, gardaí work fewer days which
most consider improves work-life balance; as well
as clocking up more unsocial hours allowance
payments, something Harris sensibly dislikes.
Certainly reducing the Garda workforce has
saved money, but as shown by the crisis of
confidence in the Garda, it is not wise or
economical. Indeed it risks breaking the social
contract.
When the lengthy and expensive Morris Inquiry
report was completed in 2008, its fi ndings were
largely ignored and the illicit practices it
uncovered continued in Garda divisions across
the country. w documents them regularly.
Judge Morris’s query, “Could it ever happen
again?” identifi es two distinct challenges for
Garda training and development: 1. Role and rank
professional training and development, touching
on managerial and leadership knowledge, skills
and competencies 2. Appropriate moral,
intellectual and practical training and
development touching on the public duty
imperative. This conclusion points at the critical
need to implement integrated management
structures/systems and to provide appropriate
development of intellectual/practical skills and
competencies and to ensure that they are
professionally deployed, implemented and
reviewed with a view to continuous improvement.
Much was expected of the Policing Authority
but it has abjectly failed to assert itself as a force
in holding the Garda to account. The proposed
folding of the Garda Inspectorate, set up in 2006
to improve e ciency, into the undynamic
Authority is a mistake.
In 2016, the former head of the Garda
Inspectorate oversight body, Robert Olsen, told
the MacGill Summer School that many gardaí still
viewed their organisation as “insular, defensive
and operating with a blame culture that results in
leaders that are risk-averse in making decisions”.
Village has been told that the blame culture
subsists, that Harris is a disciplinarian and that
this paralyses new recruits in particular, of whom
there are too few anyway some of whom would
have Gen Z soft-edged approaches to policing
and to dangerous or discomfi ting action in their
work. Harris suspends a lot of gardaí and is too
quick to do so. When he took over as
commissioner, 34 Garda members were
suspended but the number is now 120. And the
GRA has launched a judicial review regarding four
gardaí suspended for three years in the Limerick
division.
It is also alleged by gardaí that they are obliged
to waste time on form-fi lling in keeping with the
Harris may be
facing politically
calamitous
overtime freezes,
days of action
and work to rule
Medi filed to expose contrdiction, prtly engineered by Hrris,
of Smithwick’s fi nding of collusion without nming of colluder
42 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 PB
general vogue for bureaucracy for service-
providers. GRA president Brendan O’Connor has
said policing in the Harris era was “all about
meetings, pie charts and statistics”. The
so-called ‘Divisional Model’ which keeps
Superintendents out of Garda stations and
perhaps under-focused on workaday policing.
Over-specialisation too takes the focus of boots
on the ground.
In 2020, it was revealed that thousands of
emergency calls had been cancelled by
sometimes “impatient” or “rude” gardaí,
meaning some victims did not receive help. A
review of (just) 210 calls by the Policing Authority
found “substantial shortcomings” in call
handling, including incidents where some call
takers did not take sucient time to assess the
vulnerability of callers, and some officers
specifically requesting the emergency call
incident be cancelled. Deputy Commissioner
Anne Marie McMahon said the number of
supervisors to call takers had been “substantially
increased” after the review though the Garda
were “still not where we would like to be in terms
of having two per unit”. It hardly inspires
confidence in a change culture.
And still, the Irish Mirror newspaper claimed
that on one day in June this year, almost 20 callers
to the Garda’s Dublin Regional Control Room were
waiting for more than two minutes for their call to
be answered – even though the force aims for
eight out of 10 calls to be picked up in under 10
seconds.
Even if the call is dealt with correctly, the
response is often inadequate.
An article in this magazine in 2015 suggested
that “By common consent, the Garda
Commissioner should be rendered accountable
to a streamlined Garda Ombudsman, and the
Ombudsman should have powers to conduct
investigations on his own initiative. And a spirit
of independent service in the public interest
needs to be stringently inculcated, and soon”.
Disappointingly there is little evidence that
Harris has valued independence. One insider
described Harris’s managerial style as mid-
twentieth-century and as on occasion dictatorial.
He is not inspiring, not visionary and not
generous. People who work with him have
complained of unresponsiveness and
churlishness. This magazine again documents in
this issue the extraordinary lengths Harris went
to to rid himself of John Barrett, the Garda’s
executive director of human resources and
people development (who has clear views on
rosters and how to maintain morale) on spurious
grounds including the “tone” of a letter in which
he unaggressively defended himself.
GRA general secretary Ronan Slevin has stated
that Harris has “lost contact with the members
on the frontline”. GRA assistant general secretary,
Tara McManus, speaks of a “toxic culture” in the
force.
The GRA is no bastion of reason or
progressiveness. In 2017, it was found to have
falsified breathalyser figures and defended itself
on the basis senior management wanted to
collect useless data to improve their chances of
promotion. It is notable that ranks above the GRA
have not risen in support of their boss either.
Village suggested that Harris would have brought
a cultural clean sweep to the organisation but
some felt the PSNI was not a model of dynamism
itself, perhaps having shown its best side in
pursuit of an equality rather than ecacy agenda.
It was also remarked that ocers who had been
sidelined under the Harris regime appeared no
less talented or dedicated than those he has left
in place or promoted. Of course, as with all public
services it is very dicult to fire any Garda, or
indeed to incentivise one.
In 2021, Phoenix Magazine wondered whether
Drew Harris had been consumed by the very
culture he was hired to transform.
He h
as expressed forceful opposition to a long
fought-for organisational shake-up as the
Government’s Policing, Security and Community
Safety Bill undergoes pre-legislative scrutiny.
The Irish Times reported that Harris takes issue
with several proposals in the area of oversight
and, in particular, measures that would see
greater powers for GSOC, revamped scrutiny of
the security services and the functions of a new
Policing and Community Safety Authority, which,
the perceived reformer claims may potentially
threaten the independence of his own oce.
However these policy changes flow from the
Future of Policing Commission whose
recommendations Harris was hired to implement
in 2018.
In 2017, management consultant Eddie Molloy
wrote that “Whatever it is that Garda recruits
learn about the ethics and values of the force in
Templemore, it seems like they very quickly adapt
to the prevailing culture, which they learn through
the hidden curriculum, once they are scattered to
four corners of Ireland on graduation. The
individual garda cannot be blamed for ‘going
along to get along’ because such adjustment is
necessary for survival, given the vicious
treatment of whistleblowers”.
He suggested three key overdue reforms:
“That, as with the RUC/PSNI, the Police
Authority should appoint the Garda commissioner
and hold the commissioner to account, to
‘depoliticise’ the force.
That the Garda role in national security be
separated from the role of ordinary policing. So
long as the two roles are conflated, gardaí will
continue to misuse the secrecy that is essential
in regard to matters of genuine national security
in ordinary policing.
That the utterly dysfunctional culture of An
Garda Síochána be changed by the introduction
of new blood at the most senior levels. Otherwise
a lone reformer will be seen o by the ‘dark forces’
who would lose in a revolution”.
Harris’s niche was always going to be as a
no-nonsense reformer but there has been more
nonsense and little reform in his five years in
oce.
It has been mooted that Harris is in the running
to succeed the discredited Byrne as Chief
Constable in Northern Ireland. Sadly for him, the
Hrris voided bitterness fter
fther’s murder
Source: CSO
12009
not
15,000
