Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

I thank the Chairman and the Senator. The Garda is always looking for ways to ensure the management of offenders is better managed and some initiatives that are in place are a joint agency response to managing offenders. Again, we are looking in particular at high-impact prolific offenders and then other offenders who probably are more easily case-managed throughout the criminal justice system. One proposal that has been explored is the concept of tagging. Learning from the experience of other jurisdictions, tagging can be beneficial. However, it is highly complex in a number of areas. In some senses, it certainly could be stated it would reduce resources deployed by An Garda Síochána in surveillance of such individuals but, in effect, it actually can increase the use of resources in a different way. However, learning from other jurisdictions, what can be beneficial is a targeted and focused use of tagging with specific types of offenders. This is a topic that is under discussion right across the board at present and the Garda certainly is having some input into those discussions from experiences in other jurisdictions.