How is it that even when RTÉ gets it right, they get it wrong? The latest pulverising example of it occurred on ‘UPFRONT With Katie Hannon’ (who dreams up these daft titles, btw, and does RTÉ actually pay to have them?)
A number of topics were dealt with, but easily the most fascinating was that on Drew Harris. There can be few people in Ireland, North and South, who don’t know that Harris’s father was a Superintendent in the RUC and was killed by the IRA, that Drew also joined the RUC and its successor the PSNI, and that he worked closely with British intelligence during his policing career in the north.
When he was appointed Garda Commissioner, a lot of people went ‘Say WHA’ ?’ This man would clearly know a great deal about the undercover operations and collusion engaged in by the RUC. He’d know about the degree of ‘security forces’ complicity in the Dublin and Monaghan bombs in 1974, he’d know about the cooperation between the forces of law and order in the North and the killings of the Glenanne gang.
Currently the Garda Representatives’ Association (GRA) held a vote to establish the confidence they had in their Commissioner. There was an 80% turn-out and 99% of these expressed no confidence in Drew Harris as Commissioner, as apparently he has been trying to press-gang them into a roster of duty that none of them want yet which he is insisting on. Brendan O’Connor, President of the GRA, said morale was on the floor and they were keen to get round the table with the Commissioner if he withdrew his demands for the kind of roster he wants and virtually none of the gardaí want.
At which point Alison O’Connor from The Sunday Times declared she didn’t think there’d have been the same problem If instead of Drew Harris from the North, the gardai had had a Seamus Murphy or suchlike from Ballina. In short, she was saying there was a bias against Harris because he was from the North and because he was a Protestant. In other words, the gardaí, who thought they were the ones suffering while Drew collected his annual €250,000 approx), now stand accused of disliking him because he’s from the North and because he’s a Protestant. Why Alison’s nose didn’t lengthen by six inches as she spoke I don’t know.
It’s true the people of the South have been taught to dislike and distrust people from the North. But the fact that Drew came from a unionist background would have been in his favour, I’d suggest, when applying for the job.
The discussion was lively, with Alison returning to her bigoted/sectarian gardaí theme and Brendan O’Connor complained of decisions inflicted on his organisation rather than arrived at with them.
The one thing none of them even mentioned was that Harris’s background, with sworn loyalty to Britain, meant he is sitting on lethal secrets which no government should tolerate in their Garda Commissioner.
Very good jude
Thank you, James…