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

It is ironic that the Minister of State refers to our amendments as confusing when one of the key problems with the Government's Bill is that it itself is confusing. The Bill envisages a model where there is an equal division of accountability between the security and policing work of An Garda Síochána. Accountability is directly to the Minister in relation to security while in relation to policing, An Garda Síochána is sometimes accountable to the Minister, sometimes to the authority, sometimes to both and sometimes to the authority which is thereafter accountable to the Minister. One of our key points is that this confused model will not work and will result in future blame games similar to the ones which arose around the GSOC controversy.

There is nothing wrong with our proposal to give GSOC a role in deciding these matters. There is no unified body that says it should not have that type of input. The IHREC, the Government's own statutory body on human rights, has specifically expressed the view that there is no difficulty with issues of national security policing being examined by GSOC or overseen by the authority itself where national security policing impacts on the fundamental rights of individuals. We made the point last night that the authority could also have a liaison role with any Oireachtas committee which has competence for national security policing review as per the IHREC recommendation.

The IHREC has stated that it is a requirement of the European Court of Human Rights that we have an independent body to consider this matter, but we will still not have one at the end of this process. The purpose of our amendments is to make improvements in this regard, but that is difficult when they are grouped together despite being nuanced and relating to various aspects of the Bill.

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