Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank the Commissioner for the presentation. I have two subjects, and if I do not get to the second one, I will wait and come back in. One of them is more of a broad question around culture and how we move forward. Many other people look for more police on the street. I am constantly trying to think about how we have fewer police on the street and the need for fewer police on the street. Obviously, policing responses are not the whole of the story with regard to prevention and core drivers. If we keep siloing it into that response, I do not think we will reduce violence or increase safety in real time, in real terms, in communities and the likes of communities I grew up in.

Over the past couple of years I have undertaken a large body of work around the different responses to violence intervention around the world – in Scotland, Denmark, Sweden and the United States. I visited the United States and looked at some of their responses that are built around focused deterrence, which relies on collaboration with the police. What has come up in that, and I will get to a second point from this, is we know that it is always a small percentage of people causing the most harm and violence within communities. The statistics and evidence show that. Often, the first experience of violence of that small percentage of people was not as a perpetrator but as a victim, whether than be growing up, state violence, within the community, within the home and stuff like that. A huge body of the work I did was working with people who are currently, or were in the past, closest to cycles of violence. When I worked with them to develop the concept of potentially having conversations on focused deterrence to reduce violence, in the case of a number of them, although they are willing and maybe ready in some circles to look at the perpetration of the violence they have caused or inflicted, their concerns around engagement with An Garda Síochána is that historically, their relationship with the Garda has been negative.

Violence was inflicted on them by An Garda Síochána in the past. When we think about trust and I think the Commissioner mentioned constant improvement, for me to be able to move forward and for us to grow trust and constant improvement, there must be an acknowledgement of the historical harms that have been caused through the actions of An Garda Síochána within particular communities. I confidently speak about that because I was somebody who was on the receiving end of Garda violence growing up. I use myself only as an example because it cannot be disputed because I know what my experiences are, what we endured and what I witnessed. From a cultural perspective in terms of new leadership within An Garda Síochána, if we are to move forward, is there something about us having to genuinely look back also to be able to have some of that restorative work between communities and between the small percentage of people who are inflicting violence? That small percentage of people exists within professions too. I am sure it is only a small percentage of people within the police force too. How do we move forward and do that piece of work?

Second, there are some historical cases. One of them is going into its 20th year this year. Terence Wheelock’s family continues to ask for an independent inquiry. When we look at historical cases where there are question marks and we potentially need to do inquiries to show that the Garda is transparent, to build that trust to be able to move forward and to be able to give families of the past who have questions about how their loved ones are treated and, in some cases, died after being in custody, what role does that play, with inquiry and transparency, into what happened in cases like that, so we can move forward and build better systems, better policing and better relationships?