Commissioner Simon O'Brien:

We greatly welcome the joint committee's invitation to appear today. Obviously, while we recognise the legislative burden on these Houses and elsewhere is very heavy given the economic times we are in, we would greatly welcome a debate about some of the issues we have put forward regarding legislative amendment. Clearly, when we took the action of laying before these Houses a report about informant handling under section 80, we took that decision very carefully. All I would say is we certainly will make sure we can summarise or highlight those issues and recommendations we consider to be highly pertinent to a free, open and democratic society, such as that the methods of covert policing must have oversight. Methods of covert policing are absolutely vital in the fight against crime and terrorism but some openness and transparency in those areas should be given to a certain group of individuals who can look at those particular issues. Thereafter, if we, as an oversight body received a complaint from a member of the public, we could go to that group of individuals and ask it to examine the relevant records and that would satisfy us. That is absent at present and as a professional police officer in a former life, I believe it is really important that the issues we have put forward under section 80 are not lost in the overall debate. While this would involve a great deal of careful negotiation - I completely understand how that must go forward carefully - not to be lost is that the exchange between us, an oversight body and the body with which we are in most contact, the Garda Síochána, generally is about routine requests for information. In Scotland, a new organisation that is about the same size as the Garda Síochána, has just been set up, namely, Police Scotland. I had a conversation with colleagues there and found that after five days of not getting information, they were on the telephone to Stephen House, the chief constable, who made sure this request was adhered to