Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank both witnesses for coming in and making their presentation.

My first question relates to the current regulatory structure that has been established with the Policing Authority, and its powers. They mentioned that the Garda Inspectorate submits its reports and recommendations to the authority and it has stated it has not the capacity to investigate or explore them all. Could they provide an international context for our structures and how the Garda Inspectorate fits within what has been created and constructed with the Policing Authority? We were talking about systems and governance from a policing perspective, but from a regulatory perspective, are we spreading our regulatory resources too thinly across too many organisations which will inhibit effective governance and oversight? Much of what the inspectorate talks about is something we have heard from both GSOC and the Policing Authority. The inspectorate has nine staff plus themselves, the Policing Authority has 13 and is trying to hire more, and GSOC has numbers in the 20s. Would this be a long-term issue where each says it has a resource problem which then constrains their capacity to investigate and explore the different reports properly?

On that, the inspectorate mentioned specifically that it does not have an implementation function in terms of having supervisory intervention but that the Policing Authority does. With the inspectorate's systems and progression of focus in terms of its reports, can it be guaranteed that the Policing Authority will focus on what the inspectorate is trying to focus on? Do they see the point I am trying to make? Could they provide an international context for what we have created because it appears what has been created is very much reactive politically? We have created the authority based on some of the issues we have seen in recent years but is this the right embryonic structure now and will it work in the long term?