Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Perhaps, but let us suppose that something like that emerged and it was not a matter for the Garda Ombudsman Commission to look at it, I want to be in a position to have an effective means of inquiry to get at the truth of such a matter. In drafting the Garda Síochána Act 2005, we discovered that we had watered down the scope of our capacity to appoint a special inquiry, in anticipation that the Garda Ombudsman Commission would be carrying out the whole inquiry. In the Garda Síochána Act 2005, the pendulum swung too far and we did not want to have tribunals and commissions of inquiry on relatively simply, single issue items. That is what this section is all about.

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