Philosophers stone

By Gabriel Donohoe
Cops Charge Irish Government With Treason

When a national police association accuses its government of what amounts to treason it is time to sit up and pay attention.

Michael O’Boyce, President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said at its annual conference in Limerick, at the end of April, 2010, that the Irish Government had been ‘corrupted’ and had been ‘bought’ by developers and bankers. (A garda is an Irish policeman, gardaí in the plural.)

Mr. O’Boyce, speaking on behalf of the country’s 11,000 gardaí, charged government ministers with sacrificing the country to protect ‘wealthy cronies’ who had bankrolled the leading government party, Fianna Fáil. Such criticism of a serving government by its police force is unprecedented in Irish history and extremely rare in any western democracy.

Smarting from recent government disparagement of the gardaí a rankled Mr. O’Boyce pointed to an aggravating Fianna Fáil gaffe. While the government referred to the gardaí as ‘self-serving, overpaid, underworked and dishonest people’, it at the same time praised the ‘entrepreneurial skill’ and ‘business acumen’ of failed banksters like Sean Fitzpatrick (Anglo Irish Bank) and Michael Fingleton (Irish Nationwide Building Society), two people who played a huge part in bringing the Irish economy to its knees.

Clearly infuriated by collapsing living standards and the abject state of the economy, Mr. O’Boyce intended to deliver his speech directly to the Minister of Justice, Dermot Ahern, who was scheduled to attend the annual conference of the GRA. However, Mr. Ahern was sent a copy of the speech in advance and hastily declined to attend.

Mr. O’Boyce would have castigated the Justice Minister directly by saying, “The Government of which you are a long-serving member has mismanaged the wealth of this country for more than a decade by allowing our assets to be plundered and robbed by bankers and speculators, and you are making generations of Irish workers pay the price for this treachery…

“…You did this because bankers and speculators have bought your party, and in return you have sacrificed the greater good and prosperity of the Irish nation for the benefit of the few – the few who have now taken their ill-gotten gains and secured them in tax havens around the world. Truly, a government of national sabotage.”

Gardaí present at the meeting gave Mr. O’Boyce a standing ovation for the speech of which they were aware but which was never actually made. Nonetheless, the speech was angrily criticised by politicians and others who said that a police force should not intervene in politics. Justice Minister Ahern said that he utterly refuted the allegations made in the speech and that such remarks “besmirch the reputation of the force and have no place in a modern democracy.”

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