What are we to make of the refusal by the Garda authorities to allow the Irish soccer team to process in stately majesty through Dublin city centre? Are we to conclude that the force is now so reduced in morale and organisational skill that, alone of any capital in the developed world, Dublin is incapable of safely organising a motorcade through its heart? Or that the Garda management needs several years' notice before it can bring its administrative genius to the task of escorting a couple of buses a couple of miles through cheering crowds?
Let us answer the second question first. An Garda Síochána had plenty of warning that a motorcade might pass through the city centre. As a hypothetical problem, the intelligence boffins in Harcourt Square might possibly have been aware that a World Cup had been planned for the Far East nearly a decade ago. Moreover, any Irish team which qualified, no matter how poorly it played, was probably going to be given a tumultuous reception when it got home.
That's what happened in 1988, 1990 and 1994. And nor did the organisational skill which went into arranging those welcomes home constitute the loss of some administrative virginity - vast crowds had gathered to welcome Stephen Roche through Dublin in 1987.
So: has that organisational skill which made those celebrations possible now vanished beyond recall, rather like the engineering genius which brought water scores of miles to Rome and central heating to otherwise freezing villas beside Hadrian's Wall? Is it that the ability to arrange an open-air reception in the heart of the capital has survived, but the willingness to go to the necessary trouble is not? If so, why is that willingness gone?
Garda time
There are, to be sure, many calls on Garda time. Rent for flats has to be collected. Properties to be viewed. There are accountants to meet. Builders to be consulted. Nightclub bouncing jobs to be done. These little non-Garda duties add up, and before you know it, great chunks of the week have gone up in smoke; and blow me down, suddenly it's the weekend again.
And at this point, you might reasonably ask: Excuse me, but which publication is printing this item which criticises our beloved police force? An Phoblacht/Kneecappers' News? The INLA Guide to Safe Sects? The Trotskyite Anti-Imperialist All Police Are Thugs Red Banner? The Anarchist Guide to Overthrowing The Imperialist State? All those are possible; but surely not that police-loving, right-wing column, An Irishman's Diary?
Sorry; that is precisely where it is appearing. Although it pains me to say this - but perhaps not nearly as much as it will the next time I'm stopped at a Garda checkpoint - it is time we acknowledged that double-jobbing is endemic and is a major professional distraction in the force. Indeed, it's said that if a Garda reaches the age of 40 and his income from other sources doesn't exceed his police pay, then he's something of a failure.
Cries of adulation
However, the greatest problem for An Garda Síochána is not that so many of its members are keeping two stacks of plates on sticks in the air, but that its very name induces unquestioning cries of adulation. Splendid body of men and women (tearful sniff)! Gallant, upright and noble (sobbing sniff)! Incorruptible, noble and true (choking sniff)! Uncritical appreciation of any organisation, any person, does neither any favours. Like any public institution, a police force needs a vigilant public opinion to remind it of its duties, to point out the conflicts of interest which must arise when double-jobbing occurs, to criticise it when it seems not to be doing those duties, and to applaud it when it performs those duties well.
And performing its duties well is exactly what the Emergency Response Unit has been doing. The reason why the unspeakable filth that is the RIRA has been so effectively repressed in the Republic is because of the vigilance, intelligence, courage and application of the men and women of the ERU. They are a superb outfit, perhaps the equal of any in Europe, or even the better. But you cannot judge the rest by the best, but by how the rest themselves perform.
And the rest of An Garda Síochána is now incapable of deploying large numbers of gardaí around the streets of Dublin, not because of double-jobbing, but because of the huge demands on personnel time the lamentable PULSE computer system makes. To have deployed thousands of gardaí around Dublin last Tuesday would have been effectively to create a catastrophic backlog in the bureaucratic processing of the rule of law.
Computer time
For PULSE is probably the very worst thing to have happened to An Garda Síochána in its entire history. PULSE has cost ten zillion pounds, with zillions more to go the same way, yet far from speeding up the prosecution of criminal cases, it has turned it into a snail's sewing competition. The computer time needed to process a single minor offence now lasts several hours, never mind the Garda travel-time to the nearest computer terminal: almost predictably, PULSE is so expensive that many stations are not on-line to its computer.
Yet cases can be processed only through PULSE, a system so demanding that only lunatics who can mentally calculate the value of Pi to the 120th digit can work it. PULSE does not serve gardaí; gardaí dutifully serve it. Finally, in the year 2002, the curse of "2001" has triumphed: HAL rules. And in such a kingship, we shall probably never see a celebratory motorcade in Dublin again.