My view on the Garda Commissioner actions.

When I was 18 years old I used organize a Disco in the old schoolhouse on Church Avenue in Blanchardstown for local GAA kids who were barred from entry in the hops in Castleknock Tennis Club because of their Blanch addresses.
Then as now I believed in the GAA ideal ,active participation in which has caused me substantial material loss over a lifetime ,but je ne regret rien.
Around that time in the early seventies there was a small Garda presence in Blanchardstown and most of the Country Guards who landed there played football and hurling with Saint Brigids of which I was a devoted member.
The Gardai I knew were all sound as I had been reared to believe.Until I saw what follows.
There used be a 6 foot wall in front of the Olld Shool house and a narrow entrance space no more than three feet wide in the wall in front of the door into the schoolhouse,so that you could only see what was happening on the road onto which the entrance opened at that point.What was going down either side of the entrance in the wall you could hear but not see unless you looked around the entrance.
One Saturday night after 11.00 p.m ,the closing time of the disco ,I finished the music for the night ,saw everybody out,turned the lights down and stayed behind for a sneaky fag.To all intents and purposes the building was empty.
I was startled to suddenly hear the agonized screams of a child somewhere to the side of the road entrance to the hall,so I  creeped towards the entrance and looked at the source of the disturbance and boy did I get the shock of my life.
Maybe ten yards to the right of the school entrance there was and is a pathway then called the car road and now Mary Brennan Park I think ,which enabled a short cut from Church Road to the Main Street.It was poorly lit then.
What I  clearly saw then was two Guards I knew kicking and beating the shite out of a young lad no more than 12 years of age.He was calling them Culchies and the more he did the more they beat him.He was a member of a local and poor family and to this day I AM ASHAMED OF MYSELF THAT I DID NOT INTERVENE.
The truth is that Iwas so shocked at what I thought were upstanding citizens behaving in such a thuggish manner that I was stuck to the spot as it were.
Like the coward I was really I waited until they went off and helped the brutalized young lad clean up his wounds and saw him home.
These guys have no idea that I SAW what they did to this day but one guy might wonder just why I, within GAA rules .lorried him out of it with a legitimate tackle .in a match a number of years later.
The point is that these two guys had two sides to their personality's, one reserved for people like me and another for people like the Skinner.
IT IS A LESSON i HAVE NEVER FORGOTTEN.
Since then I have met many people in Public Service ,including the Gardai ,who were well reared and sound and a minority who are thuggish,sneaky and dishonorable and deceptive.
I have no doubt but that the whistle blowers are the well reared guys who have no moral option but to speak out,
I am not saying that the Garda Commissioner is one of the other type asI know nothing about her,but general;ly it should surprise no body that the possibility exists that people that attain high office can be cunning,deceptive and self serving.
What was it Charles said about Bertie.