Mr. Mark Kelly:

There might be a few of us who might wish to reply to them. I do not know if Deputy Anne Ferris was present earlier when I stated one of the things we had examined was the very interesting paper which she, Senator Ivana Bacik and others had drawn up a short time ago. The ICCL has not reached a settled view on the matter, but our preliminary opinion is that we need to consider a model which would not be a carbon copy of the Northern Ireland Policing Board but which would be inspired by the same general principles. We will be examining this matter in greater depth in the coming weeks in order to identify exactly how we might establish democratic accountability in such a body. That type of accountability would imply a measure of political participation but without over-politicising the board. The cardinal point for us is that appointments to such a board should be made in an independent and transparent manner. Any form of political participation should be organised in such a fashion that the independence of the new authority would be crystal clear.

I did some work with the Northern Ireland Policing Board immediately on its establishment and for several years thereafter. I found it quite remarkable how a professionally run and administered and well chaired policing board could result in people from very different political perspectives actually acting in a very coherent way in the interests of good policing. The former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Michael McDowell, when this proposal was first mooted in the context of the 2005 Act, is on record as stating he thought the Houses of the Oireachtas could take the place of a Garda authority and that, therefore, one was not needed. Recent events have shown that that is not really the model we want. At the same time, however, the ICCL is not at this stage ruling out some measure of political accountability being built into the mechanism. However, we need to give further consideration to how this might be done in practice.