SLICING THROUGH THE SPIN EVERY MONDAY Government must show some cop-on
CRIME NOW RAMPANT AS GARDAI LEFT TO ROT
IF SOMEONE’S breaking into your house or stealing your car, who you gonna call?
Ghostbusters?
Unlikely — unless you’re Father Dougal.
But most people are going to call An Garda Siochana, that ever-thinning blue line between law-abiding citizens and law-breaking criminals.
Now, these days you might get a fast response or maybe not as Garda numbers dwindle through retirement and a lack of recruits — all leading to plain simple corrosive low morale.
At the time you need them, there simply might not be adequate numbers on duty at the local station to mount a swift response in your time of need.
Gangs
There mightn’t even be a local station following the decision by Fine Gael Justice Minister Alan Shatter in 2013 to shut 100 of them across the country.
Many people — especially in rural Ireland where no one can hear you scream in the wee small hours of a dark winter’s night — believe that this daft decision was the start of the rot.
Among other things, it opened the floodgates to the modern-day scourge of gangs of house-breaking hoodlums driving from Dublin in high-powered cars and plying their trade beyond the Pale without any hindrance from the non-existent rural coppers.
There’s no arguing that in the last ten years at least, problems of recruitment and low morale have emerged and multiplied in An Garda Siochana.
And it’s got to the stage now where there’s a bitter Cold War between the Garda rank-and-file and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
A recent survey showed that nearly 99 per cent of frontline gardai had no confidence in their boss.
And the Garda Representative Association has decided not to invite the Commissioner to their annual conference tomorrow in Westport, Co Mayo.
And this is where it all really starts to go belly-up as Justice Minister Helen McEntee has sided with Commissioner Harris and refused her invite to the conference. Minister McEntee undoubtedly has the backing of Taoiseach Simon Harris and the Cabinet.
And this only serves to show just how dysfunctional, deranged and downright amateurish this mongrel menagerie of ministers that we laughably call a government, has become.
The Justice Minister’s boycott of the GRA conference shows zero leadership, zero vision, zero political ability and zero appreciation of the horrendously difficult job the guards do every day.
It’s simply outrageous that the Government’s turned its back on the men and women who daily put their lives on the line in the face of all forms of repulsive criminality.
And it points yet again to the Coalition’s hypocrisy and especially our new Taoiseach’s hollow declaration recently when he claimed that “Fine Gael stands for law and order, on the side of An Garda Siochána, where our streets are safe and crime is never allowed go un
checked”.
What planet is this guy on?
Neglect
Has he been at the laughing gas again?
Does he think he’s starring in The Pink Panther where he’d excel as Inspector Clouseau — the silver screen’s daftest, dim-witted dunce of a detective?
Fine Gael doesn’t stand for law and order. It’s not on the side of An Garda Siochana.
It’s allowed our streets to become unsafe and crime-ridden through unforgiveable neglect and deplorable lack of duty of care.
And every criminal in the country must be delighted at the current crisis in policing.