Mr. Mark Toland:

When I refer to intrusive supervision, I am talking about front-line supervision, with a supervisor present and on duty. With regard to governance, consider the system I mentioned. It involves a unit, separate from the operational environment, making decisions on what a crime should be, classifications and detections. I refer to the centre in Castlebar, the Garda Information Services Centre, GISC. We have recommended and it has been accepted that it should be the decision-maker, taking responsibility from those who are assessed on their performance. This is in order that superintendents will not be making decisions on what a crime should be or when a crime is detected when it sits with their operational environment. It is a matter of taking that decision-making from them and having it carried out independently. This will result in consistency across the State in deciding what a crime should be. When I looked at crime statistics, I noted that in County Donegal an assessment of criminal damage might be made in the case of a certain incident but in County Kerry it might be called a burglary and somewhere else, a trespass. One of them is correct. A central unit will decide consistently across the State on what the crime should be in the circumstances in which it is detected. This represents a far better system and takes away any inference that somebody has made a decision that is inappropriate. Most of the problems were inconsistencies. Two individuals might have a slightly different opinion on a crime, but if there is a national unit to make the decision, one will start to have consistency in recording, particularly detections of a crime.