Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The one thing that is becoming ever clearer to me in the course of this debate relates to a question that I have asked myself for the last few days. How come, when it was one of the programme for Government commitments of the 1982 to 1987 Fine Gael-Labour Government to establish an independent police authority, that did not happen during those five years when very eminent members of Fine Gael such as Deputy Noonan and Alan Dukes served as Minister for Justice? Why did they not make progress on this proposal at all?

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