In a few instances, gardaí who were actually charged with assault were not suspended at all. So suspension carries a stain and suggests that the subject may not be of fit enough character to continue wearing a Garda uniform.

This case is from a different planet.

The five gardaí in question are under investigation for the kind of activity that is known to occur far and wide within the force and particularly among those who serve in the traffic corps, as the individuals in question do.

In 2019 and 2020, as part of a wider investigation, they were questioned about “squaring” fixed charge notices. As a result of a separate strand of the investigation, four serving gardaí are before the courts — but the case of the suspended five is entirely removed from that.

What is at issue is the concept of proportionality and equality before the law, particularly as it relates to different treatment between gardaí of ordinary rank and those who have senior roles.

Before dealing with what, on the face of it, appears to be an unusual case, take a look at the effect of the suspensions on An Garda Síochána in Limerick.

Those who are suspended represent about one fifth of the traffic corps in the city. As such, resources deployed to police the roads and ensure safety for all has been greatly depleted.

Since the suspensions, an indeterminate, but undoubtedly large, number of cases in which these five had detected offences would have gone before the courts.

Errant motorists who were detected by these gardaí would possibly have had cases adjourned in the first instance but, over the course of the last few years, many would have succeeded in having their cases struck out. For these offenders, all their Christmases came as one.

Whether that’s a good result for road policing and public safety is another matter.

Beyond that, sources in Limerick — in the gardaí, among legal personnel, and in civil society — suggest that morale in the force is on the floor as a result of the plight of the suspended five.

It starts with Maurice McCabe

So what’s going on? Any examination of the fixed charge notice (FCN) issue — or “penalty points” as they were known — has to go back to the revelations that originated with former garda sergeant Maurice McCabe nearly a decade ago.

McCabe and another former garda, John Wilson, exposed wholesale abuse of the system. Some senior gardaí were responsible for terminating up to thousands of fixed charge notices.

An internal report completed in 2013 revealed that over 5% of all FCNs simply disappeared. In that report, three senior officers were identified as having abused the system to a serious extent.

One of the three was colloquially known within An Garda Síochána as “the terminator” due to the volume of notices he terminated. All received a slap on the wrist. There were no suspensions for what was a blatant abuse of power.

Following that, reforms were introduced which minimised the opportunities for the termination of FCNs. As a result, there was a considerable reduction in the amount of abuse, but it never went away.

Today, there are only two routes through which a termination can be effected. One is to contact the frontline garda — often, but not exclusively, members of the traffic corps — who made the detection and ask him or her to adjust their report.

The second route is to have a word with the prosecuting senior garda who presents cases in the district court. Frequently in courts up and down the country, the prosecuting garda will tell the judge that a particular case is to be struck out.

There is usually a valid reason for doing so. FCNs feature frequently among strike-outs. No reasons are given, and a judge will rarely ask due to the workload in courts.

That is the background of the system that has resulted in the five being suspended. 

Are the suspensions proportionate? 

The Irish Examiner understands that each of the officers involved is under suspension for terminating a small number of FCNs. Yet they have been removed from work since autumn 2020, and files on their cases are being considered by the DPP.

There is no suggestion that they were engaged in wholesale abuse, or terminating at a rate greater than any of their colleagues in the local traffic corps, or indeed in the wider force.

There has not been any detailed examination of the record of any of their colleagues in the traffic corps. Nor has there been any crackdown on a national basis against the practice that has persisted in every single division.

Can you imagine, for instance, what a forensic examination of the practice in Dublin — where all the specialist units and management of the force are based — would yield? The vast majority of terminations have always originated with senior gardaí. Prior to the reforms in the wake of McCabe, gardaí of the rank of superintendent could terminate at will. Not so now.

It remains the case that most requests to do so come from senior gardaí. 

Yet no senior garda has been suspended for requesting — and think of how a “request” from a senior officers sounds to a rank-and-file garda at the frontline — a termination.

Inexplicable two-year delay 

Nor is any civilian, with whom a request to terminate originates, facing any charges. Yet the lives and careers of these five are being held in suspension, while decisions of what are simple and straightforward matters that should take a day or two to conclude, remains outstanding.

Apart from anything else, the fact that this situation is persisting now for over two years is inexplicable.

The matter has been raised in the Dáil by politicians from the Mid-west. Retired senior gardaí in Limerick and Clare have petitioned Garda Commissioner Drew Harris on it. The Policing Authority has been made aware of it. 

Yet it still drags on, unresolved. 

Many politicians run a mile from anything to do with terminations following the eruptions that blew up around McCabe’s complaints. But this bears absolutely no relation to what was going on back then.

Damage is being done, to the individuals and their families, to road policing, to garda morale in Limerick — and probably to attitudes to the force in wider society in the Mid-west.

Proportionality and fairness, vital elements of policing by consent in a democracy, are nowhere to be seen here and individual gardaí are as entitled to benefit from such concepts as any of the rest of us.

The term “scapegoat” is often overused but, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it appears to be entirely apt in this instance.

What is unclear, and has never been explained, is for what exactly they are being scapegoated.