Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring:

At the moment we send a significant amount of our work to the Garda to investigate - the low level disciplinary-type matters. We deal with all criminal matters. That often comes as a surprise to members of the public - that they have come to us with a complaint but in fact it is being investigated by a superintendent and his or her team. We would like to be able to take and deal with all complaints. Where local intervention of informal resolution is appropriate then that path should be open, so if we feel that in fact a case can go back to the Garda we make that decision and that is done with the consent of the member of the public. Otherwise, after that, we should be in a position to take and investigate the 2,000 complaints, for instance, that we get every year. At the moment we cannot do that, both in terms of the legislation and in terms of our own staffing requirements.