Tony Gregory (Dublin Central, Independent)

Earlier this week, I attended a public meeting in St. Finbar's school in west Cabra in my Dublin Central constituency. The hall was packed to capacity with 300 to 400 local residents concerned about the increasingly serious cocaine problem, an issue that affects working class areas across the city. The national drugs unit had recently seized €1.5 million worth of cocaine in one operation in the area. It is generally accepted that the amount of drugs seized usually represents a small percentage of the quantity of drugs in circulation.

The point of relevance to this Bill is that there are only two community gardaí to patrol this area of west Cabra, the largest single working class area in the Dublin Central constituency, along with the adjoining Navan Road estates. Senior Garda management has stated that the resources are not available now or in the foreseeable future to provide the necessary additional gardaí. There is an irony in debating the role and functions of the Garda Síochána, as set out in this Bill, while this incredible lack of resources exists. Although the Minister is not here, I hope he gets the message and ensures that additional community gardaí are provided for this part of Dublin Central.

In regard to the section of the Bill providing for reform of the existing mechanism for dealing with complaints against members of the Garda Síochána, I refer to another meeting in my constituency. This took place last Friday in the office of senior Garda management in Store Street Garda station. Along with two other members of the management of the local community policing forum, I conveyed a detailed written complaint which we had received from a young man who had been given a severe beating by gardaí from that station.

Senior Garda management told us that the complainant had three options. These were to go to the Garda Complaints Board, seek an internal Garda investigation by a Garda Inspector, or find a solicitor who would take his case through the courts. The Garda Complaints Board is long since discredited among people in this part of Dublin and, by its own admission, never had the resources to do the job in any event. An internal inquiry by a Garda inspector would not even be contemplated. This left the complainant with the option of securing the services of a solicitor. Undoubtedly, we would not have been in Store Street Garda station last Friday and this young person would not be in a dilemma as to which course of action he must take if there were a Garda ombudsman.

On the issue of internal inquiries, I take this opportunity to put on record my disgust at the Minister's recent decision not to allow an inquiry into the Garda handling of the Grangegorman murders and the interviewing and charging of Mr. Dean Lyons. I have no doubt that if Mr. Lyons were a person of affluence instead of an unfortunate heroin addict, there would have been an inquiry. This case, above all, clearly demonstrates the need for a Garda ombudsman. It is a black mark against the Minister that he did not face up to his responsibilities in this regard. We saw a man wrongly charged with a most horrific double murder, the experience of which probably contributed to his subsequently untimely death, and it seems that nobody else can now be charged with the crime. If this does not deserve an independent inquiry, I do not know what case does.

This clearly demonstrates the urgency of this legislation. There is a litany of cases where people who get the wrong end of the stick from the gardaí have no confidence in getting justice other than through costly legal proceedings. All these experiences demonstrate the long overdue importance of the section of this Bill dealing with the Garda Síochána ombudsman commission and make it all the more disappointing that the proposal in this regard is flawed. It will not generate the confidence of the public as presumably intended.

I am convinced of this, having a read a critique by Professor Dermot Walsh of the University of Limerick. He states:

The ombudsman commission is intended to play the central role in generating confidence among gardaí, complainants and the public that complaints against gardaí will be dealt with fairly and efficiently, and that public concerns about policing policies, practices and incidents will be addressed seriously when they arise.

He argues that this will be dependent on its composition, on the expertise of the persons involved, on its independence of Government and on it having the necessary powers and resources to employ and train investigators independent of the Garda with the necessary powers to investigate complaints against gardaí robustly fairly and swiftly. He points out that the office of ombudsman is almost invariably a single individual because it is vital that the complainant and the public have full confidence in his or her independence of the body under investigation.

The office of ombudsman must be filled by someone who enjoys a public reputation for independence and impartiality with the necessary qualifications and expertise to pursue the types of grievances that will be brought before him or her. Even if the three proposed members are wholly independent and impartial, it will be very difficult for them to generate the sort of public reputation or profile associated with a single ombudsman. With the ombudsman, the complainant and public can put a name and a face on the person upon whom they are depending to deliver justice for them. The significance of this human dimension in generating public confidence in the system should not be underestimated. However, with the multi-member commission as proposed, the complainant and the public will almost invariably be expected to place their trust in a faceless impersonal body, whose offices are on a particular floor of an office block somewhere in the city.

With an ombudsman, unlike the commission, the buck would stop with a single publicly identifiable individual. The individual could attract the necessary public recognition for independence, impartiality, integrity, expertise and commitment. It is much more difficult for an impersonal multi-member commission, which will inevitably function in a committee-like manner, to cultivate and retain these attributes. Professor Walsh argues that even the use of the term "ombudsman" alongside that of "commission" is merely window dressing.

I wish to refer to the community policing structures. While I welcome that public representatives will be on community policing boards, it is interesting that we have just passed legislation precluding public representatives from being on health boards. The change in the health boards was media-driven and a sign of a knee-jerk response from the Government, which does not seem to have a consistent policy on public representatives being members of such bodies. Clearly the community sector is not represented on the community policing boards, which is a vital error. While the Bill provides for the establishment of fora, who will set these up? This will be done by gardaí and city council officials. However, a wealth of experience exists at local level, certainly in my area, which should be fully utilised. People from the community sector involved in community policing fora should be elected to the city-wide structures and should have a role in establishing the local community forum. The Lord Mayor's commission met the local community policing forum in my area, gathered a number of ideas and put them into its report, but failed to acknowledge that it had spoken to this group and failed to acknowledge its expertise.

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