Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Carthy. We have no issue with this new appointment. I wish Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring, the outgoing chair, all the best for her future on her retirement from the role. I met her on a number of occasions and she was certainly diligent in trying to do the right thing and progress things. She felt handicapped on many occasions, particularly in regard to funding and resources to be able to do the job to the level she and many within the organisation wanted to do.

GSOC has a vital role to play in building public confidence in regard to difficulties that people encounter when engaging with certain members of An Garda Síochána. The State as a whole and all of us have a job to do to build the maximum amount of public confidence in the institutions of the State. I refer to recent issues with people who tend to be anti-vax and against everything and who slide into that very right-wing thinking. A lot of that is based on mistrust of the institutions of the State and the way they carry out their duties. The mistrust and difficulty people often have with members of An Garda Síochána feeds into that. GSOC has a crucial role to play.

As the Minister mentioned, changes are going to occur and there are moves to transition the organisation, to put some sense of order into it and to overhaul investigation procedures, give it more powers and its own budget. All of those changes are welcome and are moving in the right direction. The general consensus among those who contact my office and the offices of other Deputies is that when people make complaints to GSOC, they find it frustrating that they do not get the kind of response they expect or the level of attention to detail that they would hope to get. One of the problems is in regard to staffing. Having members of An Garda Síochána carry out investigations into members of An Garda Síochána is not the right way to conduct this. It needs not just to be independent but to be seen to be independent. That has been one of its key failings.

I could go through a whole list of cases where people have had problems and have felt extremely frustrated with all of that. Many Deputies have raised high-profile cases where people felt let down. They thought GSOC was going to follow through on things but it did not. Oftentimes reasons were used such as that the particular gardaí involved had retired. Once they are retired that is it, they close the file and it is all over. Certainly for people who are looking for justice and to progress something, that is not a solution. It only frustrates them and makes it worse. There needs to be a great deal of work done.

I wish Judge MacCabe all the best in trying to progress this. He certainly has a job of work to do. I do not know the man at all but I take it on merit that he has the level of experience and good judgment in respect of how to follow through in this situation. We all have to reflect on things that have happened in the past with members of An Garda Síochána and with GSOC. The Maurice McCabe situation is probably the big high-profile case that really shocked the public. It did an awful lot to rock people's confidence in how things were done in this country. GSOC has a job of work to do to restore that confidence. This new appointment will hopefully be the start of moving that forward.

The independence of the office needs to be reinforced more than anything else. While there are approximately 130 full-time staff there at present, many of them are former members of An Garda Síochána or other police services. That may be the only place they can go to find people with adequate experience or qualifications but at the same time it does reflect poorly on the whole area of independence and how we can establish that better.

The job of work that is going to be needed to transform GSOC is only part of this. It is also necessary to transform how An Garda Síochána is managed. I recognise and appreciate the work the Minister has done since she came into office to bring about legislative change to make that happen. We have such a distance to go that we need to be all working together. This appointment is welcome. A fresh pair of hands will be in charge. The policing, security and community safety Bill will open that up better and give more powers. Hopefully Judge MacCabe will be able to take that on and drive it forward. It is certainly what we need to see happen as quickly as possible.

I wish the Minister and everyone here a happy Christmas.

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