Sir, – I note your coverage of a dispute between the Office of the Garda Ombudsman, and the Garda Commissioner about unfettered access to confidential Garda records (Conor Lally, Front page, May 10th) .
I have consistently pressed for greater public access to once-sensitive official records.
However, with contemporary Garda records very serious issues arise. As well as the confidentiality and security of individuals and procedures, these relate to the very act of securing intelligence which has always been crucial to the thwarting of criminal and subversive activities which threaten the State and its citizens.
Danger lies not simply in a single unfortunate leak of material, but in the possibility that it might prove more difficult in future for the gardaí, the Customs Service or other agencies to persuade people to act as informants if secrecy could not be absolutely guaranteed. Such legitimate considerations have to be put in the scales, even where suspicion exists that individual gardaí may adduce them as a way to hide wrongdoing.
There must be a means, perhaps by asking a judge to review the relevant Garda material, by which this matter can be safely and fairly resolved without conceding the dangerous principle that the Office of the Garda Ombudsman can have “unfettered access” to the Garda databases. Such a right would, however honourably operated, inevitably lead essentially to fishing expeditions by investigators and could compromise the security of the State’s most sensitive records.
Finally, I hope during this controversy the members of the Garda Ombudsman Commission will continue to operate in decent obscurity, unlike some of their analogues in other spheres of the public sector. Ombudsmen are there solely to serve the public good, not to promote themselves. – Yours, etc,
Prof EUNAN O’HALPIN,
Centre for Contemporary
Irish History,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.