Mr. Tony McGillicuddy:

I cannot give the clear-cut answer that there should be one or the other.

If one body is investigating individual complaints, should it have to communicate with another body that will then take it over and look at the systemic issues, or could there be a single body with two arms which can correlate and have some type of cross-transfer whereby it can identify if there is an undercurrent or underground river of a bigger problem with these individual complaints? I cannot say exactly what the answer is. The 2005 Act is complex. There are so many different parts to it which, perhaps, do not all fit together very well.

Consider what our colleague, Dr. O'Flaherty, said. What about the person who is in the Garda station or the garda themselves in the future if they see something is wrong? For the public, if somebody has a complaint, whether it is a systemic thing, a garda or member of the public, one must have a system where the member of the public will instantly know that if they think something is wrong, they know who they should approach. Where there is a plethora of bodies I always think it is better to have one body that people know they can approach. A little placard could be put up in Garda stations around the State stating a telephone number and e-mail address to contact if somebody has a complaint about something that has gone wrong.

I am not saying I can give a clear-cut answer, but sometimes with individual complaints one can see an undercurrent. If it then has to be transferred to another body, it could be 12 months later before the other body can look at it. Time is lost in the meantime. It is also a matter of helping gardaí. They want to be assisted. They must deal with a situation where the Oireachtas will change criminal justice legislation and it is very hard to keep up. There are changes in practice and case law at all times and they must keep up to date. There may be supervision problems in terms of some legislation where provisions are changed year on year. Some provisions relate to custody regulations, for example, holding prisoners between midnight and 8 a.m. and whether they are interviewed. It is a tiny matter but the Oireachtas has made three or four changes to that, none of which it has brought into force in the past ten years. Sections have been introduced in legislation and have not been commenced, but that makes the situation confusing. If one read the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, one would have thought the law had changed on what one does with prisoners between midnight and 8 a.m., but it had not because that section was not commenced. The garda who is doing his or her best to try to keep up to date with the law is not being served well.

For that reason, the Oireachtas must take a step back rather than do something quickly. Many different issues are being raised but it still sounds to me like patching up little things here and there. Rather than the Minister or the Government being involved along with the Garda Inspectorate or liaising with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, if one puts the Garda authority in between, how would that change things and would some of the responsibilities of the inspectorate go to the authority instead to carry out that systemic role? My view is that one must take a step back and look at where one should start. We have the gardaí, and their superiors discipline and organise them on a daily basis. How does one deal with complaints, the systemic matters, keeping up to date and developing new strategies, and where is the political and legal accountability over that? That requires something more than just doing patchwork to the current Act.