Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I wish to respond to some of the points in the discussion. Let us suppose someone goes to the Garda or GSOC with a complaint and that person has never had a previous interaction and the response is that the same Garda station decides to investigate the complaint. That is absolutely not on. Certainly we are not suggesting that the Garda could not be involved in these matters but the faulty issue is that in some cases the outsourcing of the complaint to the Garda without any GSOC oversight is unacceptable. There must be a role or some supervision in all cases.

The absence of an informal resolution process is regrettable because there are situations when, in normal circumstances, the person and gardaí in the station in question could get together and clear it up. That should be the way forward and it would be far better for everyone. The block is the fact that there is a crossover between possibly criminal or legal proceedings and disciplinary job-related problems for the gardaí involved. Reading between the lines of the Minister's comments it seems the Garda representative organisations are probably a block in this area. As far as I am concerned, they would provide a better service for their members if they were to engage in this process and seek an involvement. It is far better that the gardaí would meet citizens face-to-face to clear up any misunderstanding.

It is regrettable that the attitude of the Garda Representative Association and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors in the area of Garda reform is well out of sync with the interests of their members and citizens. It was shocking that when points were made in the House and Deputies tried to highlight some of these issues and get more accountability, the AGSI wrote a complaint and gave out to Deputy Wallace, for example, for highlighting some of the cases. The association was not so exercised when its members made complaints but were left high-and-dry after trying to improve the force.

Another aspect we need to address is the fact that GSOC has now replaced the confidential recipient. The commission is now the receiver of information from whistleblowing gardaí. How this area is dealt with should be investigated as well.

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