reading

Researching and writing on security matters is a process fraught with difficulty. Security agencies (and the Garda Síochána is a security service as well as a police force) release very few of their operational files even after the period of moratorium that generally applies in other areas of State activity. The researcher, in hope, scrutinises the files of related departments where papers might have been copied or circulated. The rewards are almost always pitifully small.

There are however occasional treasure troves where former officers or State officials may have retained documents or paperwork. I have been fortunate in securing access to some of these as well as to some personal, unpublished memoirs.

I was enabled to read the four reports of Mr Justice T. A. Finlay’s 1974 Inquiry into State Security. I also had access to certain papers relating to the Garda staff associations. The archives of the Garda Review and the (no longer published) Garda Directory provide a wealth of information on personnel matters. I have been able to make use of some Officers’ Journals – records maintained by gardaí at inspector rank and above.

Members and former members of the Garda Síochána give a particular meaning to the word ‘reticent’. If anything, most of the former gardaí to whom I spoke for this project were more cautious than their predecessors whom I met when I was researching for Guardians of the Peace 40 years ago. Thus I decided to anonymise virtually all interviews with former gardaí and civil servants other than with members who held representative positions.

Where information is attributed to gardaí I have generally cited their rank and function or section. Many were subsequently promoted to higher ranks. The rank, function or section indicated here relates to their positions at the substantive period.

I relied on more than 50 interviews and conversations in researching this book. These included gardaí (serving and retired), civil servants (serving and retired), ministers and political figures (serving and retired), journalists and others. Some of these were willing to go on the record and this is reflected in the footnotes, which I have endeavoured to keep to a minimum, preferring to indicate sources where possible within the narrative itself. Other interviewees were willing to provide background on an unattributable basis and I indicate this using the term ‘author interview’ or ‘author conversation’.

Although some events and personalities of the 1960s are described here, the principal narrative takes up where Guardians of the Peace (1974) left off. Some additional material relating to the 1960s and 1970s, originally acquired in researching for Guardians of the Peace, has been incorporated.

A great many people have contributed to my research on the period since 1960 and I would like, in particular, to thank the many individuals whom I interviewed or with whom I had background conversations while putting the material together.

I am grateful to a number of civil servants, both retired and serving, at the Department of Justice, who have given me useful guidance and advice. I am thankful to the staff of the Garda Museum, Garda Human Resources Management and the Garda Press Office for their kind assistance and to the former Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Martin Callinan, for facilitating my access to these departments. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance and advice of Catriona Crowe and Thomas Quinlan and their staff at the National Archives, and the helpfulness of Commandant Padraig Kennedy and the staff at the Military Archives.

This is my third time to have the privilege of working with Gill & Macmillan. Michael Gill, as always, was a source of inspiration and encouragement. Conor Nagel and the editing team brought their long-established professionalism to bear on the project. To all, my thanks.

Many writers, historians, public figures and journalists have chronicled events in Ireland over the years covered here. I have drawn extensively on these, mainly to provide context for the story of the Garda Síochána, acknowledging my debt, I hope, in all cases.

Any book can only partially tell the story of the Garda Síochána. It does not record the thousands of operations, the innumerable acts of courage, the commitment, the unchronicled instances of public service that make up that story. Nor indeed can it do more than touch on some of the instances in which things have not been as they should.

Perspectives on events gone by differ greatly, especially among participants. The conclusions drawn here are mine alone and naturally I take responsibility for what may be seen as any errors of judgment or interpretation.

My gratitude goes, as ever, to my wife Ann and to my family. They have been extraordinarily patient and understanding as I have immersed myself (borrowing a line from William Wordsworth) in ‘old unhappy, far off things and battles long ago’.

From the late 1960s to the closing years of the 20th century, ‘the Troubles’ overshadowed political and public life on the island of Ireland.

Within Northern Ireland more than 3,500 lives were lost with an estimated 105,000 persons wounded. In the Republic, 113 deaths and 2,500 injuries were directly attributable to the conflict, of which the great majority were in Dublin and the Border counties.

The effects of the Troubles within Northern Ireland itself, the struggle to contain terrorism and the search for a political solution have been well documented. Much less has been written about how the Troubles shaped events in the Republic.

Yet the potential threat to the southern State was arguably greater. Northern Ireland could rely on the economic power and the extensive security and military apparatus of the United Kingdom. But with the most serious civil conflict of post-war Europe on its doorstep, the Republic had limited resources with which to secure and defend its own interests.

The economic costs of the Troubles were to bear upon the Republic much more heavily than upon Britain. A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that in 1982–1983, when Britain was paying IR£9 per head of population in security costs for Northern Ireland, the Republic was paying IR£36 per head, four times as much.¹

The report showed that costs to the Republic in lost tourism, investment and economic development were also proportionately much greater.

The State’s resources included a cadre of skilled civil servants, including some adroit diplomats, who would work with the political leadership in the search for a solution. And it had a modest security establishment in its national police force – the Garda Síochána.

Military Intelligence (G2), well-staffed and directed during the war years, had been significantly reduced in its role after 1945. At the outbreak of the Troubles it had a complement of five commissioned officers.

While the politicians and the civil servants sought to deal with the political crisis, the Garda Síochána was given the primary task of holding the security line. This book endeavours to tell its story over these difficult decades and to place its contribution in the context of what was won – and lost.

Documentary sources and interviews cited here confirm that there were periods, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when political leaders and senior figures in the administration feared that the State could be overwhelmed or destabilised.

There were failures and shortcomings. And at times some individuals fell short of expected standards. But the great majority did not. Many put themselves in the way of danger to secure the safety of others. In general, the State and the people were well served.

The narrative of the unarmed force’s success in the early decades had been embedded in the public mind. The guards had pacified the country in the wake of a bitter civil war. The force symbolised an independent Ireland that could pride itself on its civic virtues. It had been created, in the words of criminologist Dr Vicky Conway, in an image of ‘decolonising romanticism’.²

By the late 1960s almost all of the founding members had retired or were deceased. Although recruitment had opened again in the late 1950s, in a country largely free of serious crime it had been allowed to reduce in numbers and resources.

The new generation of gardaí was shortly to be confronted by a series of challenges that were no less daunting than those faced by their predecessors.

From the 1960s onward, Ireland in common with virtually every other western country saw a steady rise in organised crime, albeit from a low base. Between 1996 and 2012 there were an estimated 210 gangland murders, far more than the total death toll in the Republic through violence associated with the Troubles.³

In spite of organisational shortcomings and cyclical crises, many of them chronicled in the reports of tribunals and commissions, the Garda Síochána has at least until now retained a particular place in the Irish communal psyche.

American Academic Peter Manning, an observer of Garda organisational culture, describes the force as insulated from the ‘vagaries’ of public opinion because of its role in the founding of the State.⁴

Without the contribution of the Garda Síochána, the toll of dead and injured over the years of the Troubles would certainly have been greater. And the peace process that led to the Belfast Agreement of 1998 with the emergence of new, agreed political institutions might not have happened or at least not in the way that it did.

It was a task discharged in an environment largely characterised by ambiguity and political ambivalence. Successive governments shaped the workings of the Garda to their particular purposes, not always with the purest of motives. Simultaneously they subscribed, at least notionally, to the principle of operational police independence.

It can be argued that Garda success in one of its tasks was achieved at the expense of another. While the force succeeded in securing the institutions of the State, organised crime, principally through the illegal drugs trade, established a significant presence.

The structure of the Garda Síochána as a single, unitary force is almost unique among Common Law policing models. The United Kingdom has 45 regional police forces. The United States, Canada and Australia have a multiplicity of forces operating at federal, state and municipal levels. New Zealand, with a single, generally unarmed, police service is perhaps the nearest equivalent to the Irish model.

The Garda Síochána is additionally unusual in that it functions as the State’s primary security and intelligence agency. The Special Branch (SDU) and the other personnel engaged in security duties report to the Commissioner through the force’s Crime and Security Section. The Commissioner is not only the chief of police but also the State’s principal security officer.

In the United Kingdom security matters are the responsibility of MI5 and MI6. In most European countries state security does not lie with the police but with the defence community. The closest equivalent to the Irish model is Norway, with a national, unarmed, police service. However the Norwegian Police Security Service reports directly to the Ministry of Justice and Police, bypassing the police command structure.

The Garda Síochána operates the State’s Border controls through the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB). It is the first screening mechanism for the issuing and renewal of passports. It operates vetting systems for persons engaged in the care of children. It regulates road traffic. In spite of cutbacks and closures, it still operates a network of more than 500 stations, giving it a continuing presence in every corner of the State.

Modelled on the government-controlled Irish Constabulary, set up in 1835 by Thomas Drummond, it has remained the only police force in these islands without some board or filter between it and the political authority. In March 2014, as controversies continued to unfold concerning the operation of the force (see Chapter 40) the Fine Gael–Labour coalition government undertook to create some such institution. A Cabinet subcommittee, headed by the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, was established to design the proposed authority. Government sources said that it was hoped to have it in place by the end of the year.

Numerically the Garda Síochána represents a significant sub-set of the population. Its strength at foundation was to be less than 6,000. In 2006 it reached almost 14,500, although it has since fallen back by more than 1,000. At this writing, more than 40,000 men and women have served or are currently serving in its ranks.⁵

It has remained relatively untainted by financial corruption, if one is to judge by the numbers prosecuted; about 120 in the period covered by this book.⁶ Some gardaí have been convicted for sexual offences. There have been controversies involving malpractice, brutality and misuse of power. There have been dismissals and early retirements. Some of these can be linked to ‘noble cause’ misconduct, aimed at securing a supposedly justifiable end.

The 2009 report of Judge Yvonne Murphy revealed how members of the force had helped in the cover-up of sexual abuse of children by religious.⁷ Malpractice and allegations of criminal acts by gardaí in the Donegal division led to the established of a Tribunal of Inquiry chaired by former judge Frederick Morris that sat for five years from 2002 to 2007.⁸ The Smithwick Tribunal found that on the balance of probability there had been Garda collusion in the 1989 murders of RUC officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan as they drove to Newry after a conference at Dundalk Garda Station.⁹ The closing months of 2013 and the early months of 2014 saw a series of allegations and revelations in relation to the activities of the force. With Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter and the Commissioner, Martin Callinan under severe pressure, the Commissioner retired from office in March.

A number of inquiries were established by the government. One, chaired by Supreme Court Judge Nial Fennelly, was tasked with examining the widespread practice of taping telephone traffic in and out of key Garda stations since the 1980s.

Another, chaired by former High Court Judge John Cooke, was to examine reports first published in the Sunday Times that the Dublin offices of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) had been subjected to illegal electronic surveillance. A third, by Senior Counsel Sean Guerin, examined the official response to complaints by Sergeant Maurice McCabe of malpractice by gardaí in the Bailieboro District and elsewhere. Guerin’s report was severely critical and stated that Shatter had failed in his statutory duty. The Minister resigned on May 7th 2014. Surveys of public opinion indicate that the Gardaí have held a remarkable place in the estimation of the community. A survey in 2011 by the Irish National Election Study (INES) found that the Garda Síochána was the most trusted institution in the State, more so than the media, the courts, politicians, unions and churches.¹⁰ A somewhat less reassuring picture emerged in an Irish Times/IPSOS poll in April 2014. Although 67% of respondents said they would ‘trust the Gardaí to tell the truth’, the figure in an identical poll two years previous was 80%. It is reasonable to assume that the controversies that continue at this writing will have further negative impact on public trust.

In 1922 the first Commissioner, Michael Staines, predicted that the new police force would triumph ‘not by strength of numbers or by force of arms but by the moral authority of the people’.¹¹

The challenge facing the political establishment and the Garda Síochána itself is to ensure that the force will continue to operate with that moral authority in the challenging conditions of the 21st century.

1.J. Durkan, The Cost of Violence Arising from the Northern Ireland Situation since 1968, Report for New Ireland Forum, 1984.

2.Vicky Conway, Policing Ireland: a History of the Garda Síochána (Routledge SOLON 2013), introduction.

4.P. K. Manning, ‘Trust and Accountability in Ireland; the case of the Garda Síochána’ Policing and Society, (2012).

7.Report by Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (2009).

8.Reports of Commission of Investigation into certain Gardaí in the Donegal Division (2003–2008).

9.Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into suggestions that members of an Garda Síochána or other employees of the State colluded in the fatal shootings of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Robert Buchanan on 20th March 1989.

11.Commissioner Staines’s words are engraved at the doorway of the main classroom block at the Garda College.

‘No organised crimes of violence were recorded in 1964 nor were any such crimes recorded in 1963.’

– REPORT OF THE GARDA COMMISSIONER ON CRIME 1964

In the first week of May 1964, the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Daniel J. Costigan, put the finishing touches on what would be his last Annual Report on crime in Ireland.

Secure in his office in Garda Headquarters, facing out across the expanse of the Phoenix Park, the fifth Commissioner since the foundation of the State should have been able to enjoy a sense of accomplishment in the 12th year of his tenure.

He could have had little reason to doubt that he and his successors would continue to operate in conditions of tranquillity in which a policeman’s lot was a fairly happy one. Objectively, he had much to feel positive about.

But within a few years, this apparent idyll would be gone forever. The force over which he now presided would face crises he probably could never have imagined. And the State which he and that force were committed to serve would undergo challenges that would be nothing less than existential.

Ireland in 1963 and 1964 was a country virtually free of serious crime. Costigan’s report recorded 16,203 indictable offences, about one sixth of the crime rate, proportionate to population, of England and Wales. The Garda’s detection rate was 69 per cent. In the most serious category, ‘Offences against the Person’, (1,047) the detection rate was an astonishing 95%. Beyond some burglaries, mainly around Dublin, there was no professional crime.¹

In the year under review (ending September 30th 1963) there had been four murders in the State. Two resulted in ‘not guilty’ verdicts and one – the killing of 16-year-old Hazel Mullen by South African student Shan Mohangi – yielded a conviction for manslaughter. The fourth case, the strangling of 21-year-old Cecilia McEvoy, near Portlaoise, remained unsolved although a suspect died by misadventure while the investigation was in train.

There were other factors that should have given the Commissioner cause to feel satisfied. The Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) campaign of violence, started in 1956, codenamed ‘Operation Harvest’ and focusing on the Northern Ireland border, had officially ended in 1962. The IRA was a spent force, its leadership scattered and the great bulk of its weaponry seized by the security forces North and South.

The Border campaign had resulted in the deaths of 18 people. But there was no popular uprising among Nationalists in Northern Ireland, as IRA strategists had hoped. Opinion in the Republic was largely indifferent although there were local sympathies for IRA casualties.

The Garda Síochána had responded to the challenge posed by the campaign, under the stern direction of the coalition government led by Fine Gael’s John A. Costello. For most of the men in Costello’s Cabinet, the civil war was a living memory. There would be no tolerance for self-styled soldiers of the Republic.

The government invoked the Offences against the State Act in January 1957, introducing internment without trial. The Northern Ireland government did likewise under its Special Powers Act. It was an undeclared co-ordination.

Operations were directed from Garda headquarters by a strengthened ‘C3’ (crime) Branch, led by Chief Superintendent Patrick Carroll and Chief Superintendent John Gilroy. Carroll was a veteran of the security section in the 1940s when its energies had to be directed simultaneously against the IRA and Nazi intelligence agents, half a dozen of whom were sent to Ireland to link up with the IRA.²

In Dublin, the Special Detective Unit (SDU), led by Detective Superintendent Michael Gill, had built a sizeable bank of intelligence on the IRA. They had plenty of time to prepare. In September 1953 the London-based Empire News had claimed that a new IRA offensive was in preparation and that Superintendent Gill had a ‘high ranking spy’ in the IRA for ‘many years’.

Gill sued Empire News but the High Court did not entertain his allegation of libel. Arguably, it might have been a more substantive defamation had it suggested that the head of the Special Branch did not have a ‘high ranking spy’ in the IRA.

In the country, local Special Branch units, supported by uniformed gardaí, rounded up about 60 IRA men for detention in the Curragh Internment Camp. There were seizures of arms, ammunition and explosives in an operation that started on July 8th 1957. An estimated 400 gardaí were sent north to reinforce the Border divisions. New equipment, including short-wave radio for patrol cars, was hurriedly installed along a line from Donegal to Louth.³

When the Costello government fell, Fianna Fáil, still led by 72-year-old Éamon de Valera, returned to power. The new government was no less determined to suppress the IRA. In the autumn of 1961 the Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey, reintroduced the military courts which had operated in the period from 1939 to 1945. Peter Berry travelled to Belfast to coordinate security measures with Stormont officials.

But while the gardaí came down hard on the IRA, they limited the extent of their cooperation with the RUC. When a garda raiding party came across a list of IRA units within Northern Ireland with the names of key personnel, it was quickly brought to the Depot and buried in C3. There was no question of sharing it with Belfast, where its content would have been highly valued.⁴

On February 26th 1962 the IRA announced that the campaign was ended. Within months, the few IRA men remaining in detention were turned loose. The garda deployment along the Border was reversed. In places, the prized radio equipment was dismantled and brought to the Depot for storage.

Not many of those outside of the State law enforcement system appreciated the difficulties of the task faced by the Garda Síochána during the IRA campaign. There was little understanding of how unfit the force had been in some respects to discharge that task.

Costigan would have had a realistic sense of the situation. Like his predecessor, Michael Kinnane, who had started his working life as a Crown civil servant in London, he was not a career policeman. He had been a civil servant since leaving school, rising relatively quickly to the rank of Assistant Secretary at the Department of Justice. A native of Bantry, County Cork, he had been appointed as Commissioner, aged 41, in July 1952, while Gerald Boland was Minister for Justice. He was intelligent, open-minded and aware that his ageing force, largely recruited in the 1920s and 1930s, faced serious organisational challenges for the future.

Its operational capacities had been steadily run down since the end of World War II when both internal and external threats to the State receded.

Simultaneously, Army Intelligence (G2) had been scaled down, with primacy for internal security now firmly with the Garda Síochána. Virtually all G2’s ‘subversive’ files had been transferred to C3 at the Depot. In 1950 the Garda Síochána was 7,166 strong. By 1960 it had fallen to 6,514. Almost 60 stations had been closed, while 50 others were reduced to sub-stations where a single guard worked alone.⁵

Many of those who had formed the earliest generation of gardaí were still serving, now in their late 50s and 60s. The senior officer corps at Headquarters and throughout the divisions had few younger men. There had been some recruitment in the war years, principally through the ‘Taca Síochána’, a cohort of about 300 recruits, envisaged originally as a temporary support. A few Taca men had begun to move through the intermediate ranks as vacancies arose, usually through deaths.⁶

There was no recruitment from 1943 to 1952, when cautious recruitment got under way in order to make up for retirements. There was a plentiful pool of potential recruits in a country with few employment prospects. A total of 1,126 men applied in 1952, of whom just 174 were selected for training.

In 1959 the first 12 women – ban ghardaí – were attested, realising one of Costigan’s objectives. The Royal Ulster Constabulary had started recruiting women in 1946.

As he faced into his final year in office, Commissioner Costigan could also feel reasonably satisfied that discontent among the younger ranks of his force had been contained at least for the present.

In November 1961, younger gardaí had effectively bypassed the existing negotiating machinery provided through the Representative Bodies to protest against their exclusion from a pay rise awarded to more senior members.

A meeting planned for November 4th at the Macushla Ballroom on Amiens Street in Dublin, a well-known dancing venue, was proscribed by the Garda authorities. But hundreds of guards turned up nonetheless. A superintendent and a number of inspectors took the names of about 160 men who were served with disciplinary notices, charging them with discreditable conduct.⁷

In turn, a ‘go-slow’ was initiated in Dublin, with young gardaí declining to enforce traffic and street-trading regulations. The Minister for Justice, Charles Haughey, appeared to give ground, announcing that he would review the existing negotiation machinery and, if necessary, overhaul it. But on the same day, Costigan dismissed 11 supposed ringleaders from the force.

Ten days later, after an intervention by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid, the 11 men were reinstated and the crisis abated. By unhappy coincidence, the wife of Assistant Commissioner William P. Quinn, who headed the force’s ‘B’ (personnel) Branch, was killed in a traffic accident during the course of the dispute.

The Macushla ‘revolt’ was a watershed in relations between rank-and-file gardaí and their authorities. The largely docile Representative Bodies became strengthened in confidence and more assertive in their demands for improved pay and conditions. Garda John Marrinan (28), from Clare, one of the 11 dismissed by Costigan, was elected as General Secretary of the Representative Body for Guards (RBG). He set about putting its operations on a professional footing, learning from the modus operandi of the trade unions and following the example of the Police Federation of England and Wales. He was to serve as General Secretary until 1989.

But Commissioner Costigan was already beginning to show the strain of more than a decade in his post. Events, notably the Macushla revolt, were taking their toll as he moved into his 50s.

Costigan was by inclination a moderniser, a contrast, according to Garda historian Gregory Allen, to the conservative senior officers he commanded.⁸ He was a good decade younger than most of the men who formed his immediate staff at the Depot, and as such he did not share their institutional memory of the dangerous 1920s or the struggles with Blueshirts and IRA in the 1930s.

He sought to develop his force as much as budgetary constraints would permit, initiating a series of early organisational surveys using consultants Unwick Orr and Partners.

The Technical Bureau was expanded and provided with new equipment, including infrared scanners that could read the numbers filed off the frames of stolen bicycles; bicycle theft was a frequent occurrence in an otherwise essentially crime-free society. Police dogs were introduced in 1960 with the first canine ‘recruits’ coming from Britain. An Organisation and Methods office was established in 1956. Costigan insisted that the new female gardaí be seen on the streets in uniform and not merely assigned to office duties or other indoor work.

He established a Crime Prevention Unit for the Dublin Metropolitan Division. He was keen to expand the force’s radio communications system but the finance was not forthcoming to extend it much beyond the principal cities and some larger towns. One of his early initiatives had been to have the old-fashioned, high-necked uniform replaced with the more modern, open-necked model that was now the norm in police forces elsewhere. He encouraged young gardaí to live among the community rather than in the institutional atmosphere of the barracks. He supported the right of gardaí to vote in Dáil and presidential elections, a privilege which they had been denied until the passage of the Electoral Act 1960.

The Garda Review complimented Costigan in 1959 during a tour of Border stations: ‘What most favourably impressed our members was the genuine nature of the Commissioner’s solicitude for their well-being and welfare.’⁹

He was active in his support for Coiste Siamsa, the force’s organising body for sport. He understood something of public relations, even though the term was not widely used in the public service. He could make a virtue of necessity. Although Garda cars had no warning lights or sirens, he declared that this was in keeping with the low-key role of the force in Irish society.

One of the most far-reaching innovations of his Commissionership was the establishment in September 1963 of the Juvenile Liaison Scheme. Young offenders (under 17 years) could now in certain cases be diverted from the courts system and dealt with by way of caution from a superintendent and with ongoing supervision by a garda. In time, the system of Juvenile Liaison Officers was extended throughout the State and proved to be a highly successful instrument in preventing young people from engaging in further criminality. By 1968, five years after its inception, almost 4,500 young people had been processed through the scheme.¹⁰

Ireland was changing, slowly but surely evolving from the rural isolation that had left it developmentally and economically behind most countries of Western Europe.

The drabness of life in a poor country with a stagnant economy was relieved throughout the 1950s by occasional visits from international figures. In 1952, John Ford came to film The Quiet Man in the West of Ireland with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. In 1961 there was excitement at the visit of Prince Rainier of Monaco and his bride, the Irish-American screen actress, Grace Kelly. The country was fascinated by these exotic visitors whose every action was reported in the press. In 1963 the streets were lined with onlookers to welcome US President John F. Kennedy.

By 1960 the economy was on a pathway to growth. Employment grew, as did enrolments in secondary and third-level education. Living standards rose. Irish people began to holiday and travel abroad in greater numbers. Communications improved and the numbers of motor vehicles both private and commercial increased.¹¹

The role of the garda also began to change. The somnolent lives of the party of guards in a small station were increasingly punctuated by the requirement to attend at and investigate road traffic accidents, which often involved an excess of alcohol. Public order incidents became more frequent at some of the festivals and musical events that were now being staged around the country.

The 1961 Road Traffic Act introduced a system of ‘on-the-spot’ fines for certain offences in the principal cities. In 1963, speed limits were introduced on all roads. Radar-based speed detection equipment was issued to each Division.

By and large, the gardaí adapted to the changes, in spite of reduced numbers, a paucity of modern equipment and without any significant overhaul of training. As the force aged, men in their 50s were less vigorous and less healthy, reducing the policing man hours available. When the United Nations opened recruitment for its policing service in 1956 an exodus of recently recruited gardaí started. Over the next four years, more than 500 left, seeing better prospects with the UN.

Most districts had just one official car without any equipment other than a small fire extinguisher and an illuminated roof sign. It was not until 1963 that gardaí on night duty were issued with a reflective safety belt. Even the Special Branch, always favoured in equipment and resources, were neglected. While European forces were converting to semi-automatic firearms, the standard Special Branch issue remained the .38 Webley revolver and the occasional World War II Thompson sub-machine gun.

The post-war years in Britain, with rapidly rising crime rates, had seen a concerted effort by the Home Office to raise entry standards to the police and to imbue the service with modern leadership and management techniques.

Britain’s Police College was established at Bramshill in Hampshire in 1948, aiming to provide officers destined for senior ranks with the equivalent of what military officers gained at Sandhurst. A programme was provided under which university graduates could progress to the rank of inspector after five years of service, the first two of which had to be spent on the beat.

None of this thinking was applied to the Garda Síochána, although in 1959 Costigan initiated a programme to second rising inspectors for short courses at Bramshill. The first two were Patrick McLaughlin, a future Commissioner, and Sean Sheehan, later an Assistant Commissioner. Afterwards, two or three men were sent each year either to Bramshill or to the Scottish police training centre at Tulliallan.

In 1963 Costigan selected 39-year-old Superintendent Eamonn Doherty (later Commissioner) to attend two courses at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) academy then located in Washington DC.

The placement was initiated by the US Ambassador in Dublin, Matthew McCloskey, who was concerned that the Gardaí did not have skills to enable them to search Cuba-bound aircraft transiting through Shannon. Although Peter Berry was sceptical about the idea, not least on grounds of cost, it was approved by the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass. Doherty would be the first of many senior gardaí to be rotated through FBI training.¹²

But all garda ranks continued to be filled from among those who entered at basic grade. The entrance examination for the force was pitched at third-grade primary level. In practice, many recruits had education well beyond that. But there was no fast track to promotion for entrants with superior qualifications. Although some gardaí took night degrees, there was no graduate intake at recruitment level, other than one or two who had been studying for the priesthood and who had been enrolled to study at university.

The number of crimes was low. But where there was any degree of premeditation or where serious attempts were made by culprits to cover their tracks, the guards’ success rate sometimes faltered.

In November 1958 a Kerry farmer, Maurice Moore, was murdered near Rathmore, County Kerry in a dispute over land. Nobody was ever made amenable although local people knew the identity and the motivation of the killer. The case was subsequently used by the writer John B. Keane as the basis of his play The Field.

In April 1961, a petrol pump attendant, Harry Cahill, was murdered in the course of a night-time robbery at the Iona Garage on the north side of Dublin. The following June, a six-year-old boy, Tommy Powell, was beaten to death in a cemetery in the Liberties area of the city. In neither case was anyone made amenable.

The 1963 murder of Cecilia McEvoy at the Heath, near Portlaoise, was never satisfactorily cleared up. A suspect who had been questioned throughout the night was found the following morning, drowned in a bog near Mountmellick. He had not been ill-treated and the gardaí treated the case as closed. But rumours and allegations continued.¹³

There were successes nonetheless. In September 1967 the body of an unknown woman was found at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. Painstaking investigations identified her as Maria Domenech, a Puerto Rican living in the US who had entered the country through Shannon Airport. A murder inquiry ended when, with police closing in, the chief suspect took his own life in Florida.

The Garda Síochána had been functioning with at least one hand tied behind its back by comparison with other police forces in Common Law jurisdictions. In the case of Dunne v Clinton (1930) the courts had held that Irish law did not permit detention for the purposes of questioning (other than in cases involving the Offences against the State Act.) Thus even if a suspect was identified, there was little likelihood of self-incrimination at interview.

With three years to retirement age, Costigan was increasingly isolated in the Depot. Gregory Allen cites a meeting at which one of his senior officers told him bluntly that he was not welcome.¹⁴ He was virtually without allies either among his own senior officers or at the Department of Justice from which he had been appointed.

His acceptance of the Commissionership in July 1952 had turned out to be a poisoned chalice. He had started his civil service career in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and had been one of a number of bright, ambitious young men recruited to the Department of Justice by Stephen Roche, Secretary from 1934 to 1949.

In 1952, Costigan was an Assistant Secretary to Thomas Coyne who succeeded Roche. His brief was Division 1, which included the administrative oversight of the Garda Síochána. Coyne was to serve until his retirement in 1961. Peter Berry, also from County Cork, was a grade behind Costigan, serving as a Principal Officer.

The death in 1952 of Commissioner Michael Kinnane seemed to open a doorway of opportunity for the ambitious Daniel Costigan. He had no immediate prospect of advancement within the Department, but he could make his mark – and improve his pay – as Commissioner of the Gardaí.

The appointment was solely in the gift of the government. Experience of police work was not a prerequisite. Of the four previous Commissioners, only one, Eamonn Broy, had seen service as a police officer.

As Assistant Secretary Costigan had been a key member of an interdepartmental committee set up by the Minister for Justice Seán MacEoin in 1950 on the organisation and strength of the Garda Síochána.¹⁵

The committee was to consider ‘whether any reorganisation’ might be desirable. This resulted in the abolition of the station orderly system, whereby the public office had to be manned round the clock in smaller stations, thus releasing a considerable amount of patrolling manpower. The committee recommended the shedding of many non-policing duties, such as the collection of agricultural statistics. The committee experience helped to sharpen Costigan’s sense of the force’s needs and of the challenges it would face as the early generation of gardaí came up to retirement.

But his arrival at the Depot dismayed senior headquarters officers who had, not unreasonably, hoped that one of their own would be appointed, with a consequent sequence of promotions down through the hierarchy. There was at best a cold acceptance of the new Commissioner’s authority. Few friendships developed out of it.

Relations with some of his former colleagues in the Department became equally difficult, especially after 1961 when Berry succeeded Coyne as Secretary. While Costigan was Commissioner he stood ahead of Berry in the pecking order, but once Berry ascended to the secretaryship at the age of 51 he became Costigan’s superior in the administration.

The Commissioner might have a notional independence as a government-appointed officer of State. But the Secretary of the Department was the de facto day-to-day link between him and the political power. Moreover, the Secretary was the Accounting Officer for the force which meant that the Commissioner had no independent financial authority.

There were accounts of clashes between the two men. One anecdote that circulated in the Department had Berry returning an early letter to Costigan because it opened with a collegial ‘Dear Berry’ rather than the ‘Dear Secretary’ that he believed to be appropriate to his more elevated position. Later files in the archives however show Costigan continuing to address the Secretary as ‘Berry’.

After President Kennedy’s visit in August, Costigan received a letter from Kennedy thanking him and three senior officers – Assistant Commissioner Michael Wymes, Chief Superintendent Jim Moore of C3 and Chief Superintendent Philip McMahon of Special Branch – as well as the force as a whole, for their work in protecting him.

Costigan drafted a reply which he sent to Haughey for clearance, along with a request that the President’s letter be published in the Garda Review. Berry was furious and forwarded a memo to Haughey expressing his dismay that a head of state should write directly to ‘a public servant’, thus ‘exalting’ him. He recommended that the Commissioner’s request to publish the letter be refused, which it was.¹⁶

Costigan’s relations with Haughey were also difficult. Contemporary recollections among senior civil servants at the Department are of Haughey frequently being critical and dismissive of the Commissioner.

Haughey had proven himself a progressive Minister for Justice. In 1964 he introduced legislation abolishing the death penalty for murder in most cases. He was instrumental in appointing liberal judges, with Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh becoming Chief Justice and Brian Walsh joining the Supreme Court in 1961.

But by early 1965 Costigan was under strain. The stress of dealing with a difficult Minister, an unsympathetic Department and a resentful officer corps at the Depot began to tell.

In February 1965 word began to spread among the senior ranks at headquarters that the Commissioner would be replaced. The new Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, who had succeeded Haughey in November 1964, and some other younger members of the Cabinet were of the view that it was time to make an appointment from within the force. It was felt that it would be good for morale if every garda felt that he might aspire to the very top. It would also provide a significant opportunity for patronage. Not surprisingly, informal soundings with the Representative Bodies indicated that they were positive about the idea.

Lenihan would have had personal exposure to the sentiments within the senior ranks in regard to the Commissionership. He had married Anne Devine, the daughter of Superintendent (later Chief Superintendent) Joseph Devine, district officer in Lenihan’s native Athlone.

When it became known that Costigan had expressed a wish to retire, the expectation was that the appointment would go to Deputy Commissioner Patrick Carroll. A native of County Laois, he was a widely experienced officer, having served as a superintendent in the C3 Security Section during the period of the Emergency and as head of the Section during the IRA’s Border campaign.

He had qualified as a barrister and was the author of The Garda Síochána Guide, a textbook on the criminal law and procedures which had become an indispensable aid not just for gardaí but for lawyers operating in the criminal courts. Confident and outgoing, he was active in the Irish Olympic Council and was to serve as its president from 1973 to 1976, as had two previous Commissioners, Eoin O’Duffy (1929–1933) and Eamonn Broy (1930–1950).

The other Deputy Commissioner, William P. Quinn, though senior in his appointment to Carroll, was within weeks of his retirement date. Arrangements were in train among his headquarters colleagues for his stand-down and presentation.

But when the government’s choice was announced it was Quinn who was to succeed Costigan. Costigan moved to a civil service job within the Department of Justice to enable him to reach full pensionability. Meanwhile, an extension order was made to Quinn’s service to enable him to remain on for two years.

The government’s choice was logical, if cautious. Both men had been appointed as superintendents at the foundation of the force and had served as district officers in the troubled early years. But Quinn was slightly ahead of Carroll on the seniority list. He was, as Lenihan pointed out, the most senior officer in the force after the Commissioner.

Yet Carroll was undoubtedly the more widely qualified man. His involvement in the Olympic Council gave him something of a national profile. Quinn was arguably a safer bet from the viewpoint of both the government and the Department of Justice. He was a quiet man whose gentle demeanour belied a strong character (he had been hand-picked by O’Duffy in 1929 to replace the murdered Superintendent Sean Curtin in Tipperary).¹⁷

Quinn’s Commissionership lasted just two years and was uneventful. He retired in March 1967, at which point Carroll was given the job for just 18 months, retiring in September 1968.

The principle of appointing Commissioners from within the force was now established, albeit that the two appointments heretofore were of senior officers on the cusp of retirement.

The third Commissioner appointed from within the ranks was Michael Wymes, who had been Carroll’s Deputy. Wymes was to serve for almost four and a half years to January 1973. But his commissionership was no gentle sinecure. The twin storms of rank-and-file garda discontent and political violence, long threatened, were about to break.

AGSI	Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (formerly Representative Body)
C1	Crime Ordinary Section; Crime (‘C’) Branch
C2	Extradition Section; ‘C’ Branch
C3	Intelligence and Security Section; ‘C’ Branch
C4	Garda Technical Bureau
CAB	Criminal Assets Bureau
CCIU	Computer Crime Investigation Unit
CDU	Central Detective Unit
CSPD	Corporate Strategy Policy Document
DMA	Dublin Metropolitan Area (later Dublin Metropolitan Region [DMR])
DDU	District Detective Unit
DPP	Director of Public Prosecutions
EC3	European Police Cyber Crime Centre (The Hague)
ERU	Emergency Response Unit
FBI	Federal Bureau of Investigation (USA)
G2	Defence Forces Intelligence
GNDU	Garda National Drugs Unit
GNIB	Garda National Immigration Bureau
GRA	Garda Representative Association (formerly Representative Body)
GRECO	Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption
GRICO	Garda Racial and Intercultural Office
GSCB	Garda Síochána Complaints Board
GSOC	Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission
IRA	Irish Republican Army
ISB	Intelligence and Security Branch (‘C3’) (later ‘Crime and Security’)
JRB	Joint Representative Body
NBCI	National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
MI5	United Kingdom Security Service (domestic)
MI6	United Kingdom Security Service (external)
NSS	National (Garda) Support Services
NSU	National Surveillance Unit
OPONI	Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland
PSNI	Police Service of Northern Ireland
RIRA	Real Irish Republican Army
RSU	Regional Support Unit (Garda)
RTÉ	Radió Telefís Éireann
RUC	Royal Ulster Constabulary
SDU	Special Detective Unit (Special Branch or ‘S’ Branch)
SMI	Strategic Management Initiative
SOCA	Serious Organised Crimes Agency (UK)
STF	Special Task Force
UDA	Ulster Defence Force
UVF	Ulster Volunteer Force