Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

I thank Senator Martin Conway for his remarks. The trust levels in the Garda Síochána are very much due to the men and women of the Garda Síochána and the work they do every day. I also acknowledge it and pay tribute to all the men and women of the Garda Síochána. Without them, we would not have those levels of trust and confidence. Without the support of the community, which we do not take for granted, we could not do the job we do, and we very much thank the communities for the support they continue to provide.

The Senator asked about the Policing Authority. As the Senator knows, the Policing Authority was incepted on 1 January this year and is still in the first nine months of operation, but is very welcome. Along with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, and the Garda Síochána Inspectorate, it provides a framework of oversight and accountability, including oversight of the performance of the Garda Síochána, which, along with the JPCs, which I will come back to, provides, I hope, more transparency and accountability.

The public meetings with the authority are both searching - as with this committee - and robust in nature. That is really good as it allows us to challenge some of our own assumptions about the delivery of a policing service. It allows us to hear the different perspectives and opinions of the chairman and eight members of the committee. All the authority members come with their individual experience and expertise. We are eager and willing to learn from that.

I will jump to the joint policing committees, JPCs. The Senator stated that the chair of the authority recently organised a meeting and my colleague, Assistant Commissioner Nolan, and other members represented An Garda Síochána. We certainly will take on board the comment about having meetings with the JPCs. I share the Senator's view that the joint policing committees have a key role to play in ensuring local accountability and in making sure the delivery of a policing service is tailored to meet local needs. In other words, we can hear from local representatives what the priorities for the community are and we can ensure our assistant commissioners and chief superintendents are delivering that service with support at headquarters level. Assistant Commissioner Nolan can give an overview of that interaction with the JPCs if that is helpful. We welcome the authority and it is very much part of the future of An Garda Síochána in terms of that level of oversight that allows us to be there.

The Senator asked about our plan for change and how it compares internationally. As I stated, we were very fortunate that we have all 11 reports of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate. We have brought a copy of the plan for all the members and we will make that available. I would also like to extend an invitation to the committee to come to Garda headquarters and see our programme of work and the transformation office. We got very valuable insights from the Garda Síochána Inspectorate, which brings international policing experience. We did not just stop at that. All the challenges we face in An Garda Síochána are being faced by police services the world over. We looked at other change programmes in New Zealand, Scotland and other police forces in the UK and right across the world. We looked at the International Association of Chiefs of Police and all the police forces in America and benchmarked ourselves against all of those.

We take stock of what is happening right across the world and we consider if we are doing the right things in the right sequence. An interesting international debate currently comes back to the point about trust. It concerns police legitimacy and whether the police are engaged in the community in the way they should be. It gives me great pride to say that many representatives of police forces are coming here to look at exactly what we are doing with police training and how we go about our engagement with the community, as they did in Kilkenny last week. My experience is that we benchmark well internationally but our programme office monitors that very closely.

I extend the invitation to the committee to come to Garda headquarters. I will ask my colleague, Assistant Commissioner Nolan, to deal with the JPCs and Text Alert scheme asked about by Senator Conway in more detail.