Why are we so corrupt? Read on

The Leitrim writer John McGahern received an early lesson in fiction in the Garda barracks where his father was a sergeant. The gardaí were supposed to write reports of their daily patrols in a ledger, he recalled in his 2005 memoir, but they often didn’t bother going out; most of their reports “were fictitious, and were referred to laughingly as patrols of the imagination”.

The Cavan writer Shane Connaughton also had a Garda ...