Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Let us take a step back to the time before the establishment of the Policing Authority and imagine this was a layer in the Department of Justice and Equality. If people approached the Department of Justice and Equality about a file that was submitted to it and about which they had concerns and someone from the Department contacted the Garda about the contact that had been made, there would be a level of concern about telephone contact on a disclosure someone had made regarding an issue it was pursuing. The Policing Authority, as a regulator, has to be careful in the interests of transparency about the level of telephone contact. I raised the issue about a year ago. There is regulation and there is oversight and then there is this collaboration and active input. The authority has to be very clear about separating the two, otherwise this will arise again. I brought it up over a year and a half ago. If there is collaboration and active input and involvement where the authority becomes the central point of policy input, how does it provide oversight for that?