Ms Emily Logan:

On the transition to the new model, there are two key issues, the first of which relates to an entirely new governance model. A three-person commission is appearing before the committee, whereas the draft legislation provides for one Garda ombudsman. All of us who are appearing before the committee were appointed with an express mandate in our contracts to manage the transition, and our job is to prepare the organisation to move from being a three-person commission to having one ombudsman.

The second issue relates to streamlining the investigations, for which we set up a project group in July last year. While the legislation is at pre-legislative scrutiny stage, we are not sitting back and waiting for the legislation. Instead, we are proactively, to use the Deputy's expression, taking a pre-emptive strike. We set up a project group of 19 people internally in the organisation last July, which looks at issues the committee has identified such as ICT that will support better data capture of the kind of work we are doing in order that we will have better analysis and better evidence for the decisions we are making. We are confident that we are safely ahead of the legislation.

We have identified resources as a key issue, along with the issues of institutional independence and what is called the timeliness of investigations, which was mentioned earlier. In the context of support from anybody who will end up voting on the Bill, I would ask them to be mindful of the question of timeliness. Mr. Justice MacCabe referred to our reliance on, and co-operation with, other bodies, including An Garda Síochána. The legislation places an obligation on us to provide timely investigations, but we cannot do that without there being a similar obligation on the people with whom we need to co-operate for the investigations.

I assure the committee that as a commission, we are jointly responsible for the governance and executive management of the organisation and for the transition.