Mr. John Redmond:

When it first became apparent that there was going to be an oversight body to take over from the Garda Complaints Commission, and this was going to be the ombudsman commission, I was contacted by GSOC before it became operable. There was a series of meetings with interested parties or stakeholders and I represented the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors. We met on a regular basis coming up to it being empowered to carry out its duties. For about 18 months before it came into force I met it on a regular basis where we discussed many things. We discussed the culture of the organisation, we discussed how best it would approach complaints and what the likely reception was going to be from members of sergeant and inspector rank. The other associations were represented as well.

At all times I accepted the need, and AGSI accepted the need, for an oversight group to deal with complaints against members of the Garda organisation. At all times we proposed that it should be totally and utterly independent from the Garda organisation. This is one of the problems. GSOC operates with a limited number of staff and within a limited budget. It is constrained, to some extent, in the amount of business that it is tasked with investigating or examining. The result is that it passes or leases back a certain amount of complaints to the Garda organisation. In our view, one can never have a robust or publicly acceptable system that gives back, to the people complained of, a complaint made against them. It should be totally separate. That is one of the biggest issues that we have.

With regard to interaction on a daily basis, we have some concerns. Some of it is that GSOC is constrained within the Act and within some sections of the Act. First, where there is an inadmissible complaint made against a member of the Garda organisation, GSOC feels it is obliged to tell the person. Let us say it is me, for instance, then it would say: "Dear John, There has been an inadmissible complaint made against you". That is where the matter ends. I am left wondering what I did, what am I alleged to have done and where I did it. How am I going to learn from a person who makes such a complaint? Even though it has been judged to be inadmissible by GSOC, how can I learn from it? How will I know what I did that might have been wrong and how can I correct it?

Second, I would want to know who made the complaint or through what interaction was this complaint made. That is another issue of concern.

Third, Ms Butler mentioned mediation earlier and the necessity to be totally accepting of mediation before one is tasked with being involved in mediation. That is an important issue from our point of view and so we would agree with her view, of course.

The fourth point refers to where GSOC would try to say, in some instances, that there are several service level complaints and "we would like you to deal with them informally, please". At the moment, unless the person complained of agrees to the informal resolution of those complaints, as well as the person who made the complaint, they cannot be dealt with in an informal way. We have found that some of our people, men and women who carry out their duties, have a bad day from time to time. Please bear in mind that I am not talking about serious breaches but minor, informal service level things where somebody was rude to a person they may have stopped or somebody who approached the counter. They are very much the small breaches at service level. We have no problem, in theory, with dealing with those complaints. The problem is there is a requirement and expectation that one will immediately apologise even where one might not have been wrong. That seems to be the desire from GSOC whose attitude is: "Look, accept this, its no biggie and deal with it. The complainant is happy, you just have to suck it up, it is something alleged against you but it is nothing big."