Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree that we need to look at the cultural background in An Garda Síochána that allowed this to take place. We should also look at the bigger, wider structural issues in terms of what An Garda Síochána is and should be doing. However, we also have a structural problem in our Government and public administration system. When senior members of An Garda Síochána are asked questions in public fora, such as at today's meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality and the last meeting of the Policing Authority, as to why the clear recommendations - that we spent a lot of time formulating - on the immediate employment of the right people to start addressing problems have not been implemented, the answer we get is that they could not do that because they were not authorised to put the staff in place. We got rid of the employment control framework four years ago, which was a deeply damaging piece of administrative structuring. Why is it then that we still seem to have an inability to be flexible and to allow agencies to employ people quickly? We saw that it in here when the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight could not get somebody for six months. What is the Minister's experience of this, as a line Minister? Is there a problem with agencies of the State being able to get swift authorisation to employ the right people?

I also ask the Minister to answer my first question, namely, does he agree that we should have a legislative amendment to enable the courts to run through all of the 14,700 wrongful convictions in one fell swoop?

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