Ms Margaret Tumelty:

Since 2016 there has been an iterative process with An Garda Síochána to look at its policing plan and see what it is setting as targets and how does it know it has been successful. There has been a mix of crime statistics, milestones for the achievement of individual pieces of work and a public attitudes survey. These are very useful, but on their own they do not give a full picture. Crime statistics can be affected, as happened during Covid when the number of burglaries went down. That was not because of any action by An Garda Síochána, however.

Similarly, with milestones, it is a question of whether an activity or an input happened but also whether either of these had an impact on someone's experience of policing on, for example, any given Wednesday. I do not know the answer to that. While useful, the public attitudes survey arguably does not hit enough people in particular cohorts in order to be able to give a real sense of what their experience is. This year, we have been pushing An Garda Síochána and having really good engagement around having new reporting that would place better emphasis on outcomes for people. This is something we are doing in our engagement work.

The Deputy mentioned sex workers. We met with the sex worker organisations twice in the past year, because it is about the lived experience. The policing plan does have a tick beside whether a certain policy has been implemented. We will then go out and listen to gardaí and ask them if a policy has been rolled out. Have they the resources to do it? What is their experience at station level? We will then go and talk to the domestic abuse organisations and ask if it is happening in practice. Those things in concert give a picture. The big emphasis in what we are trying to do is see what is of value to the public in terms of people's confidence in the police service and confidence to report. If I am in a certain part of Dublin, say, will I report? If I am a member of a particular community, have I any confidence in reporting my crime or that I will get a response? The tone of policing is important to people, as is how it is done. It is also in terms of legitimacy. Is there corruption in An Garda Síochána? What about the recording of the use of force? We are trying to recognise that those tangible, quantitative measures have a place but so does bringing in the lived experience of policing and what people tell us is impacting them as suspects, as victims or as people who just engage with the police. That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to talk to gardaí about how they are listening to communities and how do they know they are being successful. What are their measures of success beyond the quantitative? There has been really positive engagement on that in recent months. We hope that reporting will have good outcomes.