Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Recent issues relating to An Garda Síochána: Discussion

9:40 am

Ms Josephine Feehily:

I first need to explain that we received Dr. Shannon's report at the very end of May, the same time as it was published. Our own work regarding children had begun very much earlier as a themed piece of work in our policing committee supported by my colleague, Ms Tumelty. In that regard, the Policing Authority at committee level had had deep engagement with the Garda regarding how children are treated as suspects and as victims. The section 12 piece was only a subset of that and was a much broader-ranging discussion. My colleagues met the Children's Rights Alliance and the Ombudsman for Children, so we had a much broader engagement. We did seek an advance copy of Dr. Shannon's report but were not able to get one. That might have informed our planning earlier in the year. We got it literally the day before it was published, the same as everyone else. By then, the committee was already engaged with An Garda Síochána on the totality of its approach to working with children as victims and suspects. What we are doing now with Dr. Shannon's report is the same as what we are doing with all the other reports: we have taken the recommendations, we have built them into our performance framework and we will ask the Garda periodically what it has done about them. I know that at least one of them has been implemented. Does Ms Tumelty want to add anything to that?

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