Ms Noirín O'Sullivan:

Over the last number of months public confidence in An Garda Síochána has certainly been impacted by many of the issues that have been raised. I do not think it is just confidence in An Garda Síochána but also confidence in the entire administration. It is very important that we work hard and tirelessly in the context of restoring that public confidence and demonstrating that, as an administration, we are collectively fully committed to addressing these issues and putting them right. In the context of An Garda Síochána specifically, we have the programme. A programme in itself means nothing; the issue is the actions under that programme. The first thing I did on becoming interim Garda Commissioner was to engage very widely with our internal and external stakeholders. By that I mean that I met, along with my senior management team, individual members of An Garda Síochána in stations. I considered it very important that in times of turbulence they knew there was strong visible leadership from the top and that the norms, values and standards we expect were being driven from the top.

There are almost 16,000 people in An Garda Síochána, including uniformed and sworn members, civilians and the Garda Reserve. I can give a good example. Last weekend, at the One Direction concerts which were attended by 250,000 people over three nights, I went to meet and brief our members who were dealing with that. As I said to them, there are so many things we can do. People ask me every day if I will go out and refute what is being said. I do not think it is right to refute what is being said. The right thing to do is to allow a process to take place where all of the allegations that have been made are fully investigated. We very much welcome that and will co-operate with the commissions of investigation. As I told the members both in the rural stations around the country and in Croke Park last week, the public confidence in An Garda Síochána will be restored by them and by the people in our support offices one encounter at a time. Every time a member of An Garda Síochána engages with somebody it is an opportunity to demonstrate the professionalism, dedication, energy and commitment that I spoke about in my opening address. I firmly believe that is how we will restore public confidence in An Garda Síochána.

From a leadership point of view, it is very important that we provide strong, visible leadership, that we hold people to account and, equally, that we hold ourselves to account for living up to the values and behaviour we expect of our members. Collectively, we can work together to restore public confidence in An Garda Síochána. The work that is being done in reforming the 2005 Act will help that and support the programme we have already initiated.