Ombudsman controversy less about bugs and more about a big fly in the ointment

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

When the story broke on Sunday about the Garda Siochana Ombdusman Commission’s office being bugged, it had all the appearance of being something sensational.

The office is the one that deals with complaints about members of the Garda Siochana and which also deals if there is an incident involving Gardaí – say, when a guard discharges a shotgun or when a garda patrol car is involved in a serious collision.

The answer to the question first posed by the Roman poet Juvenal, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guards?) is the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission or GSOC.

This was very serious. Evidence had come to light that the offices may have been bugged, which also suggested the work and investigations of the office had been compromised. The GSOC had investigated the incident and had only concluded its inquiry in December, several months after being picked up.

If this was true, it suggested a conspiracy which might be as grave as the bugging scandal of the early 1980s, though perhaps not as extraordinary as the events surround the Arms Trial from a decade earlier than that.

The bugging scandal of the 1980s came about after the government of the day, led by Charles Haughey, suspected that somebody (one of its Ministers presumably)  was leaking confidential information from Cabinet meetings to selected journalists.

In 1982, then-Minister for Justice Sean Doherty arranged through senior Gardaí to have the phones of two journalists, Bruce Arnold and Geraldine Kennedy intercepted (or tapped). The motives were purely political rather than having to do with the security of the State. Haughey and his cronies regarded Arnold and Kennedy as hostile.

When Michael Noonan of Fine Gael became Minister for Justice late that year, he revealed all the details of the tapping in early 1983. He disclosed that Doherty had authorised it and that normal procedures had not been followed. He also disclosed that another government minister had borrowed bugging equipment form the guards to secretly record a conversation with another minister Martin O’Donoghue.

Ray MacSharry justified the highly irregular practice by claiming that O’Donoghue had told him that money could be found to assist anyone who found themselves in financial difficulties (MacSharry’s business was reported to have been experiencing troubles at the time).

Predictably the upshot was a massive national story and another of the periodic crises that Fianna Fail underwent when Charles Haughey was leader. However, as before (and later) Haughey survived the challenge to his leadership and winning the contest by 40 votes to 33. That challenge saw the beginning of Des O’Malley’s exit from the party.

And it had an epilogue over eight years later when Doherty went onto RTE Nighthawks programme to claim that it was not a rogue operation as had been claimed but that Haughey was fully aware that the phones of the two journalists were tapped. Haughey, then Taoiseach, denied it categorically but faced renewed calls for his resignation (this time from Albert Reynolds and his supporters). He did not go immediately but it was clear that his time had come.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.