Mr. Drew Harris:

A case involving a breach or infringement of human rights would always be a serious matter and one which would properly belong with the ombudsman.

Turning to performance issues, we have this single strand in respect of dealing with misconduct and performance. It is an elongated disciplinary process. We could do better with far faster engagement with individuals regarding their performance. That could include the aspects mentioned already, but it could also include matters such as poor investigation, the late submission of files or, indeed, being rude or discourteous to a member of the public. Some of those would be public complaints and we would have to work through with the ombudsman how that office would refer such complaints to us in respect of performance issues being involved. We must ensure, however, that the ombudsman is dealing with the serious cases and not with matters which can be more relevantly engaged with by local management and dealt with quickly at that level. That would then leave the ombudsman clear to deal with crime and serious matters.

We would always say that we regard an infringement of someone’s individual human rights as a serious matter. We take human rights incredibly seriously. We have built it into our Garda decision-making model and that is a feature of training throughout the organisation. We have made huge efforts and deployed a great deal of resources into developing a culture of human rights. Therefore, I do not think there is much pushback from us on this issue. In fact, we are supportive of it. At the same time, however, I want to have a performance management system which has some teeth and that allows us, in cases where constant poor performance is demonstrated, to exit those individuals from the organisation because they are incapable of fulfilling their roles. I hope that provides some clarity in respect of poor performance being dealt with as a management function by managers and supervisors within An Garda Síochána, as opposed to instances of more serious misconduct and criminal matters.