Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I broadly support Deputy Ó Snodaigh's points. The powers that we are conferring here are being conferred not alone on the Garda Síochána but also on the Defence Forces and the Revenue Commissioners. It might at first glance appear questionable or odd that such powers are being conferred on the Defence Forces and the Revenue Commissioners but on reflection and following the Committee Stage debate it makes perfect sense to extend these powers and the admissibility of the evidence so gathered to the Revenue Commissioners and to military intelligence and so on.

I cannot see why the Minister is expressly excluding the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. He did not tell us a great deal, notwithstanding a lengthy debate on Committee Stage. He said the ombudsman commission should learn to crawl before it walks, that it is a new institution, and let us test it and see how it performs when its mettle is tested against experience and it builds up its own jurisprudence, and so on. That is not much of an argument. It runs against the experience outside this jurisdiction. This facility is extended to the ombudsman in Northern Ireland.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh makes a fair point when he brings the Morris report into the debate. We have an extraordinary capacity in this country to forget things when it suits us and to consign to oblivion something like the Morris tribunal on which we spent a great deal of taxpayers' money, and time. The Morris tribunal report makes several recommendations and we nod in their direction then put them on a shelf somewhere where they are forgotten. It is nowhere similar in any way to criticising the Garda Síochána generally to say that what was revealed in the Morris report was appalling beyond belief and some of what was done defied belief.

Some of my colleagues will never forgive the present Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform for his reaction to that report when he came in here and created a diversion by selecting two colleagues in the House for criticism. If Deputy Stagg and I were put in possession of disturbing information of an allegedly criminal nature what could be more responsible other than going to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and telling him or her the information we were given and that we do not know whether there is anything in it and asking that it be checked out because it is of great concern? This is what my colleagues in the House did at the time but the Minister created a sideshow here and blew up a sandstorm and avoided the issues that Deputy Ó Snodaigh raised today about the Morris report.

The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission has the remit to inquire into alleged serious offences that, as has been stated, might well involve the death of a person or serious injury and in any event, the investigation of arrestable offences. If there were allegations of that gravity and the commission felt obliged prima facie to have them investigated then it ought to have available to it the same tools to do the job as the Garda Síochána has in terms of arrestable offences in the jurisdiction generally.

I cannot see any plausible reason for putting the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission at a disadvantage because if it was investigating complaints along the lines that might be referred to it, which would involve allegations of corruption in the Garda Síochána, it would manifestly be a more serious case than if those allegations were affecting an ordinary citizen. I do not think it is any secret that Ombudsman offices in the neighbouring countries which I mentioned believe that they ought to have available to them the capacity through surveillance to assemble evidence that might be admissible in court subsequently.

For the Minister to state that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission is a new institution and is not yet experienced is not very convincing. There may well be a meeting of minds between the Minister and his officials in this regard but I do not know why. We are scarcely talking about bugging the Garda stations of the country. If malfeasance was suspected or under way it is a bit improbable that it will be conducted from the Garda station in any event. Whether it is or is not, the argument for the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission being treated the same as the Garda Síochána seems to be compelling in terms of the instruments at its disposal to fight crime wherever that crime is it, yet the Minister has not replied addressed this.

The Minister can do it whichever way he wishes. Deputy Ó Snodaigh has advanced a couple of alternative amendments and I advanced the excision of the relevant subsection. Whether or which, the Minister should not permit this Bill to be passed while putting the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission at a disadvantage. It is very important to this House and those who established the commission with such expectation and confidence that what happened can never happen again and that people can have confidence when complaints are made that they are fairly, thoroughly, rigorously and properly investigated and that the commission is shown to be a success. We and the taxpayers have a vested interest in that and I do not think the taxpayers would appreciate the Minister putting the commission at a disadvantage vis-À-vis the powers we are now conferring on the Garda Síochána.

See this speech in context