Ms Josephine Feehily:

I thank the joint committee for giving me the opportunity to meet it so early in its work programme. The Chairman asked me to address issues and challenges for the Policing Authority in the short and medium term. I will keep them brief and will be happy to develop the themes further in our conversation.

It is important to crystallise the role of the Policing Authority which is best captured by the Long Title of the Bill. It is about "overseeing the performance by the Garda Síochána of its functions relating to policing services". We have a long list of specific tasks, but overseeing performance is the umbrella under which all tasks take place. As the Chairman said, the authority is not quite nine months old; therefore, I am quite certain that we have not yet identified anything like the full list of issues, problems and challenges we are likely to encounter in the coming years. As one of my colleagues said, our job is a marathon, not a sprint, which is an appropriate description.

We have all the issues and tasks one would expect a start-up to have - staff, logistics, authority governance, providing basic public information, too much to do and not enough time to do it. Headway has been made under all these headings, but we are conscious that they will always be a work in progress.

Start-up issues for the authority were compounded by a set of statutory requirements with fixed or implicit timelines for our first year of operation and at our first meeting the authority decided that meeting these requirements was not optional for a variety of reasons, not least ensuring public confidence in this new institution. They include the following "must dos", all of which have either been achieved or are well advanced: having meetings with the Garda Commissioner in public - the fourth such meeting will take place tomorrow and we will have another in November; developing and publishing our strategy statement - it was laid before the Oireachtas in July and circulated to committee members recently; approving the Garda strategy statement, which was recently consented to by the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality; developing policing priorities for 2017 - they will shortly be sent to the Minister for approval; working with the Garda Commissioner to develop the policing plan for 2017 which must be formally submitted to us before November; and developing a code of ethics for the Garda by 31 December 2016. These are not light tasks, but they all have have to be done in year one, which means that there is not much room left for discretionary work. I will return to the latter two topics, but I assure the committee that, thanks to the huge personal commitment of authority members and the chief executive officer and her team, we have achieved a great deal in a short time.

At the outset, the authority also decided as a matter of principle to be as transparent as possible in everything it did and to develop the public facing parts of our functions as quickly as we could. In addition to public meetings with the Garda Commissioner, there have been two rounds of public consultations on the code of ethics; we invited public comment on our strategy and hosted the first meeting for many years of chairmen of joint policing committees for many and will do so again; we held a very successful consultation day with stakeholder representatives and have published all of our governing documents and minutes. Since the authority's establishment, we have also received a number of formal referrals from the Minister which have to take their place on the priority list.

There is a long list of challenges, some of which I will mention. An ongoing and understandable challenge is to "establish" the authority in the fullest sense of the word. By this I mean we have to register the authority as a legitimate stakeholder in the realm of policing, including in the mind of the public, and to establish its authority. The statutory framework for Garda oversight and accountability, as I am sure the committee is discovering given its work programme, is complex, with many actors. Clarifying where we fit in and developing an understanding among stakeholders of the full scope of our functions and an appreciation of the value of a more transparent and timely oversight regime will be a work in progress for some time.

Overseeing policing performance is the core of the authority's statutory remit. Our greatest challenge in the short and medium term probably is to establish a performance framework to enable us to assess the performance of the Garda. We are working with the force using the statutory cycle of the policing plan to begin to establish performance targets which are more specific and measurable than in the past. It is our intention that next year’s plan will contain some measurable targets and baselines and that in the future we will build from there. We will need to understand the links between policing priorities and resource deployment and consider it essential that progress be made in deepening organisational and individual performance management and accountability in the Garda. The importance of having robust performance management systems in place has been emphasised in recent reports by Mr. Justice O'Higgins and the Garda Inspectorate. A functioning performance framework will also be essential in overseeing the implementation of a wide range of third party reports, including those by Mr. Justice O'Higgins , the Garda Inspectorate, GSOC and so on. This is not just a mechanical process with numbers and dates. Victims' experiences, public confidence in and perception of Garda performance will be important measures.

On the code of ethics, during a recent consultation day event a number of people observed to me that the draft code we had published for public comment was 90% there, but there was, by no means, agreement on the same 90%. However, since a code that satisfies everyone is probably not achievable, that was not too bad. We will deliver a revised text soon, but the medium-term challenge we foresee, in which the committee might like to take an interest, will be embedding the code throughout the Garda organisation. Much of this work will fall to the Garda Commissioner and her senior team, overseen by the authority, but I expect we will have suggestions to make to them.

The authority has certain functions in approving civilian posts and making senior civilian appointments which have recently taken effect. We expect new regulations to commence our functions relating to senior Garda appointments shortly. These tasks will present a logistical and resource challenge for us, but we regard them as contributing enormously to influencing the culture of An Garda Síochána. Related to this, we have also been asked by the Minister to oversee the preparation by the Garda Commissioner of a workforce plan to deliver the Government’s vision of a Garda service with 21,000 personnel, comprising gardaí, civilians and reserves, including a plan to increase Garda visibility by redeploying more gardaí to front-line policing duties and replacing them with civilians. That is a task we have not yet commenced.

While I have referred to the challenges in what the authority has to do, we are always conscious that the challenge above everything else for all of us in this room is to have a police service that deserves and enjoys the trust and support of the people. The Garda public attitude survey gives strong evidence of trust and community confidence in the Garda overall. In that regard, Ireland is fortunate because law enforcement relies to a large measure on voluntary compliance and public confidence. The authority considers that right now the combination of the recommendations for change provided in various reports, the capital envelope provided for investment in technology and equipment which is badly needed, the acceleration of recruitment and the Garda Commissioner’s personal commitment to modernisation and renewal provides a real opportunity for the Garda to professionalise, build and improve its capacity and provide a 21st century policing service. By delivering on our mission "to drive excellent policing through valued and effective oversight and governance", the authority is determined to play its part in meeting that challenge.