Mr. Pat Leahy:

If I might come in at this point, I think people have had different experiences around the engagement with joint policing committees, JPCs and community policing fora. I do not want to pre-empt the recent evaluation of JPCs by the Policing Authority. It boils down to relationships and having a dynamic approach to it and the current system is not dynamic. If one is meeting once a quarter as a member of forum, a great deal of water has gone under the bridge in between meetings. What we are proposing in terms of community policing structure, and we have experienced this, is that it be dynamic; then there are no surprises when one goes to the JPC because one has dealt with it all full on. The Garda management knows what is going on, the local representatives know what is going on and the local authority knows what is happening because they are working on it day in and day out; the actual committee becomes a committee. When I was posted to the north inner city and was involved in a JPC I never felt that I was being held accountable any more; as a committee it was our responsibility to deal with the issues and that was the way we approached it, but that came about because we were not lining up a list of issues at a quarterly meeting. This was very dynamic engagement and communication between the local representatives, DCC and the Garda and we were working on the issues day by day. There were no surprises when we got in. We were right up to date with it. That is the place we need to go and the model we are proposing will inject that dynamism when day in and day out we are dealing with problems. It is not something we are waiting to get a list on, whether it be from a community policing forum or from the JPC every three months. We need to get away from that system.