Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan announced on Sunday afternoon that she is retiring from An Garda Síochána.
Commissioner O’Sullivan notified Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan that she would be stepping down from the role after 36 years of service.
In a statement, O’Sullivan mentions inaccurate reporting on her position, and pressure from other bodies over the past year:
The support for me to continue in the role is evident. However, I devoted much of my summer break to considering if continuing would be the right thing to do. It has become clear, over the last year, that the core of my job is now about responding to an unending cycle of requests, questions, instructions and public hearings involving various agencies including the Public Accounts Committee, the Justice and Equality Committee, the Policing Authority, and various other inquiries, and dealing with inaccurate commentary surrounding all of these matters.
They are all part of a new – and necessary – system of public accountability. But when a Commissioner is trying – as I’ve been trying – to implement the deep cultural and structural reform that is necessary to modernise and reform an organisation of 16,000 people and rectify the failures and mistakes of the past, the difficulty is that the vast majority of her time goes, not to implementing the necessary reforms and meeting the obvious policing and security challenges, but to dealing with this unending cycle.
The Minister for Justice then announced that he will be appointing Deputy Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin Acting Commissioner with full powers with effect from midnight.
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