Ms Josephine Feehily:

It is unusual for us to be in a position to be asked to discuss in person legislation that has passed on Second Stage. Having reviewed the Second Stage debate, I can thank the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Charles Flanagan, who indicated it would be good to hear from the Policing Authority. As such, I thank the Minister for the invitation to appear. Having said that, we are happy to help if we can.

There were several references in the course of the debate on Second Stage to the obligation on the Policing Authority, under section 62(O), to issue a report within two years on its effectiveness and the adequacy of its functions. The most useful opening remark I can make is to refer members to that report, which was sent by the authority to the Minister on 22 December 2017. It was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in January 2018 and is published on the authority's website. The report made a range of observations and I will pick them up when commenting on the various sections. That is why I am positioning my remarks in the context of those reports. We make an overall assessment on our effectiveness, which I will not read it out verbatim in order that we can get down to business now. However, we stated that we considered our functions broadly adequate for the tasks assigned to the Policing Authority in the Garda Síochána Act, although frequently they are cumbersome, overly circumscribed and inefficient. Subsequently, the authority made a submission to the Commission on the Future of Policing, which is also published on our website.

The reason I reference those two documents is to make clear to the committee that we know we have a limited brief and limited powers. We welcome additional powers but in respect of this Bill, our view is that we would welcome broader powers. In the submission we made to the Commission on the Future of Policing, we noted the importance of accountability and consent policing. We indicated that the architecture is unnecessarily complex and crowded, with much duplication. The Garda believes there is too much oversight and accountability but we do not agree. All of the functions exist in the architecture should continue and ambiguity and duplication need to be reduced. This is relevant to one of the sections because one of them risks introducing more complication.

Our report noted that one of the significant barriers to the effectiveness of the Policing Authority was the challenge of overseeing the performance of an organisation while the head of that organisation is accountable to somebody else, in this case, the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Secretary General of the Department. This has been a barrier to our effectiveness and has created serious confusion in the public mind. In the context of being a regulator, allowing the regulated body to have two places to go leads to a risk of gaps in oversight. That is relevant to parts of the sections in the Bill. We proposed to the Commission on Future Policing that it be placed beyond doubt in statute that the Garda Commissioner is the chief executive, the de factoemployer of An Garda Síochána and independent in the performance of his or her functions in respect of policing and security. The structure should be such that the Commissioner is clearly the chief executive and operates alongside an oversight body. Currently, the oversight body is the Policing Authority but this may change after the Commission on the Future of Policing reports. That is also relevant to the Bill.

As I note in the conclusion of my statement, I hope the reports we sent to the joint committee gave it a sense that while the Policing Authority would welcome new powers, it would welcome even more a better defined overall architecture, clearer expectations of oversight bodies and a better understanding of the limitations of oversight in the current statutory framework. Some parts of the Bill are very clear. However, we believe that other solutions are available in respect of other parts and that it is not clear how certain parts would fit in to the existing architecture. I will be happy to go through each of the sections, as Deputy O'Callaghan did, if that would be helpful.