Mr. Drew Harris:

I will take that question first. There is an issue that head 11 and head 104 are replications of each other. Head 11 says that the Garda board is said to be responsible for monitoring organisational performance, while head 104 says that the Policing Authority keeps under review the performance of An Garda Síochána functions. As the chair of the Policing Authority has already suggested, there is a role for a Garda board as a support in terms of internal management governance and expertise to me as the Commissioner and to the senior team in dealing with a very complex organisation. We have an effective dual employment model with regard to Garda staff and Garda members. We are the sole policing service for Ireland, and we have a wide range of responsibilities including, almost uniquely, national security responsibilities. The board would be a valuable addition for our management and organisational effectiveness. The difficulty is, however, and I believe that the chairman and I are not very divergent in our views here, that when the new authority is assessing the performance of An Garda Síochána's functions, is the board assessing my performance or that of the board and the decisions it has made? Within this, it starts to actually dilute. If the responsibility does not lie with me then authority seeps away from me in terms of the changes and driving the formal and operational agendas within the organisation.

Obviously, we too understand that public confidence is wrapped up in our accountability mechanism. We are supportive of an accountability mechanism. We are supportive of the public accountability mechanism and we recognise that we are very different from every other public body in the State in having a very regular public accountability exercise with both the authority and Oireachtas committees. However, I think there is confusion as to who is looking after what here between the board and the authority, and that could be clarified. As the chair of the authority said, I am not sure that that would be that difficult within even the heads as they are written.