Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring:

We see them as unnecessary areas of our work. We could supervise the carrying out of service complaints but the actual dealing with complaints should be done by the Garda. Any effective business has such procedures in place. At the moment, unfortunately, we get too many people who come to us saying they have gone to the station to complain about something and they are given a form and told to go down to GSOC for it to deal with it when those gardaí have no idea of the level of severity or trivial nature of the complaint. They do not deal with matters. We see a role for gardaí to deal consistently and efficiently with matters of a certain level. If they have to come out from behind the desk and say "I am sorry someone spoke to you in that way," that is for them to decide. That would allow for greater resources within GSOC to concentrate on other areas where it is not possible for gardaí to deal with them.

When we look at the process of dealing with them, as is evident from our reports and experience, most of our investigations are at a low level and go back to the Garda under section 94(1) for investigation. That requires the initial appointment of a superintendent who then has to find time within his or her perhaps busy district to commence an investigation. We have no comeback. We can write reminding them that agreed procedure times have passed but we have no way to get them to deliver a report back to us. There is no penalty in Part 4. It was a good idea in 2005 or the Oireachtas would not have passed it. Let us look at it again and ask whether it is still efficient in 2016 and 2017. Can we move matters more appropriately in a business-like way through our organisation and the Garda?