Does Pride come before Garda impartiality?

Reproduced with kind permission of The Irish Catholic which first published this piece on April 16th.

The last few years have seen members of An Garda Síochána participate in Pride events with garda cars in Pride livery but how appropriate is this? Many other causes and businesses take part also from AIB to Dublin City Council but a police force is surely in a different category.

Last year it was found by Leeds High Court that a chief constable was wrong to allow uniformed officers to march under a Progress Pride flag promoting transgender ideology at a Pride march. Linzi Smith, the complainant, was reported as saying

 "...it would be 'terrifying to live in a community where the police have abandoned their duty of impartiality and embraced a highly controversial political cause.'" 

In his judgement Mr Justice Linden referred to the fact that in July 2023 the Police Service of Northern Ireland had decided that their statutory obligation to act with fairness, integrity and impartiality meant that its officers and staff could no longer participate in the Pride parade in uniform. The judge pointed out that 

“…it is not hard to imagine circumstances in which the officers in question might be called on to deal with a clash between gender critical people and supporters of gender ideology, and therefore situations where the former had cause for concern as to whether they were being dealt with impartially.”

Women have already needed protection from this lobby by the Gardai for example, at the Let Women Speak event in Dublin three years ago when activists were kept back at some distance behind barriers from women trying to speak and be heard.

Is there any other political lobby for which the gardai allow their cars to be used in advertising it? Those seeking to promote gender identity ideology are heavily involved in lobbying to secure legislative change on a range of issues such as prosecuting “hate speech” which could well affect women calling out men who try to access women’s single-sex spaces given the novel new definition of “gender” in the Criminal Justice (Hate Crimes) Act 2024.

In the push to embed gender identity ideology in legislation and in many aspects of Irish society from schools to sports women and girls are having our rights to our spaces, sports and even our name eroded. The highly contentious concept of “gender identity” is clearly political.

In 2019 the then Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was reported as saying of Dublin Pride that “.. it was very important that members of the force were participating in the parade in uniform.” Yet a year later a memo was issued by which the commissioner directed that all members were reminded of their obligations under the Garda Síochána Act 2005 to act impartially at all times and should not engage in any comment on any media platform that is, or could be perceived to be, political commentary.  

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was also reported two years ago as having written to the four garda associations asking all gardaí not to comment on matters of a political nature that could impact on the then forthcoming General Election. RTE reported that "Mr Harris said this was to ensure An Garda Síochána's status as a non-political organisation." 

Under section 4 of our Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024 it states that policing services are to be provided independently and impartially and that effective policing is dependent on securing the support and confidence of the public.

Queried recently about the gardai’s participation in Pride the response given was that

"... An Garda Síochána engages with all communities to promote the highest levels [of] trust and confidence. Under section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014, public bodies have a statutory obligation in the performance of their functions to have regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and treatment for its staff and persons to whom it provides services.  An Garda Síochána's engagement with Pride and use of the Diversity Car, as with other minority community engagements, is consistent with this legal requirement."

Mr Justice Linden said that Section 149 of the UK Equality Act 2010 doesn’t authorise unlawful conduct in order to achieve the equality objectives.  He added that the Public Sector Equality Duty doesn’t permit conduct that would otherwise be prohibited under the Act. He pointed out that if there is a breach of the duty of impartiality “it is no answer to say that the breach was for laudable reasons or to achieve equality related objectives.”

As one woman on Twitter pointed out about the PSNI up the road in Northern Ireland:

“If they don’t march in uniform in the orange (sic) parade and everyone understands why it would be wrong, they don’t march in the pride parade. It’s not difficult to understand.”