Ms Josephine Feehily:

On the new regulations, to answer the Chairman's question directly, my latest understanding is that they will be available before the end of the year.

I suppose the bedding-down bit is a tricky one. From the authority's point of view, we will be producing our first annual report by Easter next. We will be reporting a body of work at that point and I would hope that we would be able to state that certain of our functions are established and up and running. The appointments piece may well continue to be a work in progress because it is commencing so late, and the fact that in the course of next year we will be developing a report on the shortcomings in our legislative framework probably makes it difficult to say whether we will ever bed down. I am certainly happy that elements, such as having a proper tracking system in place, better public meetings, better public engagement and a published code of ethics, will have been established as part of our infrastructure and be functioning better than they are this year by the time we make our first annual report. I would be happy to come in then and talk to the committee.

Picking up Deputy Brophy's point about regular reporting, maybe when we produce our annual report we can then say what bits are embedded and what parts of our functions we have not even begun. We have a long list of functions, for example, to keep under review the governance, training, recruitment, etc. Some of those pieces will be one-off tasks that we will get to incrementally.

The Chairman asked how often the authority meets. The authority meets as an authority in plenary. We started out thinking we would meet 11 times - that would be once a month, except August. As it happens, this year we will probably have met 13 times, including one or two that have been done by electronic means. At all of the 11 plenary meetings this year, we will meet the Commissioner. I am sorry I did not answer that question from Deputy Clare Daly. We meet the Commissioner at every one of our monthly meetings. Four or five of them are in public. This year, it is five.

We also have a committee system. Authority members have formed three committees. We have four, but three are for engaging with the Garda. These are performance and strategy, code of ethics and appointments. Those committees would meet Garda colleagues and Garda representatives as often as necessary. The performance and strategy committee meets at least once a month. The code of ethics committee meets frequently, but less frequently with the Garda. The appointments committee is a work in progress because we are not doing the appointments. Between the whole lot, we will certainly meet them. The chief executive and her team meet a liaison team at least twice a month.