Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

There is a profound constitutional question with regard to a proposal that the executive function of policing the State should be hived off from Government and given to something like the RTE authority or the Health Service Executive. That is a profoundly erroneous proposition. It is one put forward by the Labour Party about 20 years ago on two separate occasions in Government, but it was never progressed because it is a fundamentally suspect, unprecedented and unwise proposition.

I have the authority of the Government to establish——

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