Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her reply. I am keen to pick up on some of the points. The Minister stated that under section 74 the commission is allowed to bring in senior members of the Garda. Let us make a comparison. Let us suppose I was working for a large company, for example, Google, and I took the view that I was unfairly dismissed and sought an investigation. I would not like it if two senior members of Google were on the investigation panel.

We dealt with this before when we were working on the Garda Síochána Bill. We have not tabled many amendments to this Bill. There are only five, whereas there were 74 in the Garda Síochána Bill. We would have had to print a book if we had gone back over all of it.

The Minister suggested that the normal international practice for minor cases is for the police to investigate themselves unsupervised. Sadly, I do not believe we have a normal situation. The Minister is aware of what has come back in all the various reports in recent years. It is a little scary. We do not have a normal set-up. That is why people do not like the idea of making a complaint if the complaint is likely to be investigated by gardaí without any oversight from GSOC and no feedback on why the matter has not been taken any further.

This relates back to my last point about the informal resolution mechanism. The Minister agrees that it would make sense in the context of a comparison of labour relations machinery, the Labour Court and so on. The idea of an informal resolution process makes sense all round. I do not see any rationality behind the idea of the Garda refusing to lift the veto in this regard. This is something the Government should be pushing.

The Minister made a point on feedback to the public and agrees we should get more feedback. However, we both know that we are not going to get that without more resources. We are not going to be able to provide a proper, strong oversight body on the cheap.

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