Ms Orla Keane:

I agree it should be "shall". There are a number of areas wherein the reference to "may" and "shall" need to be tidied up in due course in the drafting of the Bill. With the permission of the Deputy, I would like to point out that since we first got the heads of Bill there has been a change such that gardaí cannot now involuntarily detain people. That has to be done by an authorised officer. That is a significant move. The second issue is that the time period for which somebody can be held in custody is now down to 12 hours. The commission has asked for a shorter period. We would ask the committee to consider that. People detained for drink driving and so on are detained for only very short periods of three and six hours. We would ask the committee to consider reducing that time period further. As the committee will appreciate for a person in custody in a Garda station who is unwell that is a very intimidating and difficult environment.