Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

As I listened to the debate on this amendment, it became ever clearer that the underlying assumption in the amendment of the existence of some independent policing authority has not been thought through by those who proposed it in this House. I have never heard a coherent argument for it, although I have heard people come up with half-thought-out views on the subject.

On the Order of Business — I do not know whether the Ceann Comhairle was present — someone was giving out about the fact that he had tabled questions to the Minister for Health and Children and been told that they had been referred to the Health Service Executive for a response. There was an outraged squeak of horror from the Deputy, who realised that one of the difficulties of delegating an entire area of governmental activity to an agency other than the Minister is that one is suddenly confronted with a situation where the Minister can say that she is sorry but that there is a group of people known as the board of the HSE. There is a chief executive officer, Professor Brendan Drumm, and Deputies must address questions to the executive rather than to the Minister. They make the decisions, and the Minister gives them the money, directives and policy. Thereafter, it is up to them to come up with explanations.

The same emphatically applies to the question of policing. Deputy Finian McGrath, whose contribution I listened to very intently, put his finger on it, although not in a way with which I would agree, when he said that the police cannot be seen as a tool of the Government. I do not agree with that proposition at all. In our Constitution, there are three arms of State, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The Executive arm of the State is most certainly responsible for its policing. It is responsible through this Parliament and its elected Members to the people. That is what the Constitution envisages.

It would be a very sad day if policing were carried out in this State in a way in which no one on these benches was personally and politically accountable to this Chamber, and the relationship between the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Garda was as close as that between the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and the staff of "Morning Ireland" at RTE.

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