Mr. Hugh Hume:

I can talk to that. That is working out very well. It is considered both by An Garda Síochána and ourselves to be a very effective and timely way of dealing with service level complaints from members of the public. A member of the public might contact us about an issue that does not in itself necessarily indicate wrongdoing by a member of An Garda Síochána. It may just be that it has not been a good service. We are able to pass that in a semi-formal way to an inspector in the local area who will deal with the matter and resolve it very quickly and, it is to be hoped, to everyone’s satisfaction.

To give an example from our most recent report where a member of the public complained that their immigration status was not being progressed expeditiously, we passed that to the inspector who was able to establish that it was actually a resourcing issue. It was not a case of an individual behaving badly. They were able to progress the immigration status for the individual very quickly. That left the individual very happy, and rather than going into the formal, structured, due process approach the Chair has discussed, it meant the member of the public got a result in a quick manner. Last year, 173 issues were resolved in that way. It works really well and it is to be hoped it will roll forward into the new legislation as well.