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

I will share time. I will speak for four minutes and Deputy Mick Wallace for one.

I am very glad that the appointment to GSOC has finally been made and that we are not going into the recess without it. The gap has been far too long between the retirement of Mr. Simon O'Brien and this appointment and I feel the commissioners have suffered in his absence. The time when he was at the helm of the GSOC was one of the most innovative times for putting that organisation on the map. I do not know much about Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring apart from what is in the public domain. It might be viewed as an unusual choice because she has a high profile but she is renowned for her independence, an incredibly important asset in this cesspit - I could say "challenge" to be more polite. Independence is what is required and I understand from people who know her that she is very able, an independent thinker and more likely to be a watchdog than a lapdog. That is what we need inside this organisation so I wish her well in her new post. In some ways I feel a little bit sorry for her for what she is getting into, as I do for the other commissioners, because I believe GSOC is at a crisis point. It has not been armed with the legislative powers to do the necessary job of exercising oversight over An Garda Síochána.

Ms Justice Ring will benefit from her expertise on both sides of the criminal justice system as she will not need to be educated on what can happen when gardaí take a stance or as to the ways in which gardaí sometimes operate. She is, however, heading up an organisation which is suffering from a lack of resources and power, particularly given the fact that this organisation has also been charged with the function of confidential recipient and is the receiver of complaints about the gardaí, not just from the public but from gardaí themselves about other gardaí. The recently published annual report shows that only four gardaí have gone to GSOC and it has been very tardy in its approach to dealing with those people. This is very regrettable and Ms Justice Ring's first job should be to give her backing and support to those gardaí who have the courage to blow the whistle on the inside.

Looking at the figures in the GSOC annual report, of all the initial contacts with GSOC, only 28% actually became complaints at the end of the day. GSOC states that in 2014 there was only one case out of thousands in respect of which a criminal investigation was concluded and referred to the Director for Public Prosecutions and where the Director for Public Prosecutions recommended a prosecution. This could not possibly be the case and we have a huge problem with these statistics. They show that only 26 files were sent to the Director for Public Prosecutions, while the overwhelming majority of the cases that end up in GSOC are referred back to the gardaí for examination, rather than be independently evaluated by GSOC. These issues will come back to haunt us. We are on the record stressing the necessity to strengthen the legislative powers of GSOC but the new commissioner is going to have to bat hard on those things because she has an uphill battle. I wish her well and if there is anything we can do to assist we will be happy to do so.

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