Mr. Mark Toland:

The Commissioner has taken the lead on that. In terms of crime, John Twomey, the deputy commissioner, has taken responsibility for crime. The Commissioner has done all the responses to us. It is part of her modernisation programme and she has taken those recommendations to be part of that programme. She has been the respondent to us and that is the person with whom we have been dealing. We had a five and half hour meeting with the Commissioner to discuss the report, the recommendations and the rationale, and that is important. We have to make sure that we put a proper case, a business case, for change. We have to persuade the Garda Síochána that this is the right direction in which to move. Ireland is unique with a national police service. While we might identify best international practice, it has to fit that into Ireland. Sometimes we may make a recommendation which needs to take into account rural policing and the geographical difficulties of policing. Sometimes our recommendations are accepted but have to be modified to fit into the Irish context, and we accept that. There are very few rejected recommendations and some of the rejected recommendations from previous reports have been accepted subsequently. That has not been an issue for us. Sometimes the issue has been technology and the Garda is woefully behind other police services. From my policing experience, I would say it is 30 years behind. That necessary investment is now coming through. The Government has put €200 million aside to invest in technology which will make the Garda a much more efficient organisation.

In terms of crime investigation, we are disappointed to see the same results. It is getting slightly better but there is still an issue about not recording crime. That is a common issue in other policing services but where they have that problem, they have intrusive supervision. As I mentioned in my opening statement, there is an absence of a sergeant being on duty on 24-7 basis in Ireland across all the Garda divisions and districts. When gardaí are finishing their tour of duty, the sergeant should make sure they put any report from the day onto the system and that it is properly supervised. We did an evaluation and analysis at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night in August and we found that out of 28 divisions in Ireland, only 14 had an inspector on duty. I asked the question: who is in charge of that division and who is making sure that people do what is expected to be done? That is a significant gap in leadership. Those at the top table and the top of the organisation have a key leadership role insetting standards but if we do not have front-line supervisors on duty to make sure things get done, mistakes will be made and gardaí will have gone home. They do not go home intending not to put something onto the system but they are busy and then they go home, the matter is not put on the system today and then they are off for four days and some of these matters are not put onto the system. It is crucial to have sergeants and inspectors on duty with operational units.

In terms of making sure that what goes on is correctly dealt with, Deputy Wallace mentioned a superintendent making a decision about a crime. There is a call centre in Castlebar manned by civilians and gardaí ring in when they are dealing with a crime. They should ring from a crime scene and they can report that crime directly to the call takers in the call centre. It is a very efficient system. They are very good at what they do. We have got the consent of the Commissioner to allow those people to be the decision makers. When a garda rings up, that unit will decide whether the crime is a burglary, a robbery or criminal damage. If a superintendent in the future wants to change that crime, they will have to go through that call centre and, ultimately, that call centre will decide what that crime should be. That will stop 96 district superintendents making different decisions because currently there are 96 ways of deciding what a crime should be across the Garda districts. This will make those in this call centre the decision makers. It is an enormous step because it is taking away the authority from the district superintendent and moving it to this call centre.

I should have answered Deputy Daly's question on management. We have also persuaded the Commissioner to move to a divisional model of policing. This takes away the district superintendent; the superintendents now in a division will have responsibility for a key area. Instead of a superintendent being responsible for crime, human resources, finance and community relations, they will be responsible for crime. There will now be 28 superintendents responsible for crime across the 28 divisions instead of 96. Twenty-eight superintendents will be responsible for community policing, community engagement and partnership-working instead of 96 previously. We have given them a new structure which will mean we will have experts in crime. Superintendents cannot be experts in everything. I was not. There are superintendents who are very good at community engagement, some will be very good at operational policing and some will be very good at crime. This model allows them to put people with the right skills in charge of certain aspects of policing instead of expecting 96 superintendents to be good at everything.