Too early to say how long Gsoc investigation will take, Harris tells policing authority

The Garda Commissioner has said it is far too early to estimate how long it will take to complete the investigation into claims a member of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) was at a party that Gerard Hutch attended on the day he was cleared of murder charges.

Appearing before a meeting of the Policing Authority at St Laurence O’Toole Recreation Centre on Dublin’s Sheriff Street, Mr Harris said he was in agreement with the Minister for Justice Simon Harris that the issue was “a matter of serious concern” and that it now in the hands of the National Criminal Bureau of Investigation, “so experienced, competent detectives [who] will just want to move this on as quickly as possible ,” but, he added, “we are really just in the first 24 hours of this and we have to determine in the first place is there potential criminality for us to investigate”.

“So we are conducting inquiries which may in time open up but they may close down as well,” he said.

Speaking after the meeting, the authority’s chairman, Bob Collins, said the situation in which a now former member of the body established to provide oversight of An Garda Síochána was actually being investigated by the force “was not how nature intended”.

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“It’s not what anybody developing or devising the architecture of oversight in the criminal justice system would have expected ever to have arisen. It is a novel environment for everybody. But I think the correct approach has been taken; that is that An Garda Síochána have been called into to do to do it. They will do it professionally, as they do. And then everybody will see.”

Mr Harris was appearing at the committee just a matter of hours after he had been heckled at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association in Westport where he had, in a speech, raised the ongoing dispute within the force over his attempts to introduce new rosters.

Asked for an update on the issue by authority member Dr Donal de Buitléir, the commissioner said the matter had been complicated by the decision of Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors to go to the High Court over the issue but that the differences over rostering had “defeated” the force’s own internal proceedings.

“We are waiting for those proceedings to be dealt with and I hope then that we can proceed to the WRC because I am firmly of the position that our internal processes have failed. We invested very considerable time and effort in those procedures without success and we find ourselves at an impasse,” he said.

“We have a roster that is tiring people out in itself. I think it does generate overtime as well. There’s an odd mixture of people taking about work/life balance but then talking about the hours that are being worked in terms of enhanced payments as well so there is an odd mixture of arguments in respect of this.

“So, there are a number of things to be balanced; it was never going to be easy but it has proved to be very difficult and it has defeated our internal processes.”

The potential for the force to exceed its budget for the year given the additional costs associated with the visit of US president Joe Biden and the potential for visits by former US president Donald Trump and Britain’s King Charles was raised.

Mr Harris said that uncertainty over Mr Biden’s visit had added to the cost as there had not been possible to give adequate notice of leave and rest days being cancelled and there had been the more normal expenses in relation to feeding and housing members of the force in three different locations.

Chief Administration Officer Joseph Nugent said it was too early to say definitively whether a request for additional funding would have to be made but added “I think the indications are that when we land the costs for the recent visit, we will be in that space”.