Feargal Quinn (Independent)

That is good. Good management practice is what it should be about, to which I will come in a moment.

My real concern is the balance between accountability and performance. We could have good accountability and we are moving in that direction because there is a need for it and for trust. However, it would be a shame if it damaged performance. I fear that will possibly happen. In business, one wants to attract the best recruits to one's company. One, therefore, wants to attract the best recruits to the Garda Síochána. I am not sure a young person leaving school or university and who wants to make a future for himself or herself in the Garda Síochána would have the confidence to say that is where his or her career lies when he or she sees the Government making decisions which will inhibit the freedom to make decisions in many cases.

I understand the reason for the provision because there have been some anomalies in recent years. If that young recruit, who has joined the Garda Síochána, gone through training and is on the beat, sees trouble brewing, he or she will have to decide whether to get involved or stand back and let it sort itself out because he or she will not want to take steps which might get him or her into trouble. We are putting into operation something which is needed, namely, accountability, but if it restricts performance and the ability of someone to take action, it will not attract the right recruits. Even if we get the right recruits, they might hold back because of the constraints, restrictions and controls.

Policing is difficult and most of us would be unhappy to fulfil that role. The Minister said this Bill is not about independence, but it needs to be. In 1996, the Government introduced the strategic management initiative, which we all welcomed as a good idea. The strategic management initiative, or SMI, was passing responsibility down from the top, closer to where the action was. I do not get the impression that the SMI has worked as well as we had hoped at the beginning, although things do not always work out as planned. When we introduce the Garda Síochána Bill, which is so heavily biased towards bringing control to the top, we are, even more so, working against the possibility of making the SMI work as a State policy. I query the extent to which it is working when one considers that we now have even more civil servants making and controlling decisions at those levels. I have some concerns about best practice working on that basis.

It seems almost as if someone in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform saw the opportunity provided by this legislation to increase the Department's hold over the small details of how the Garda Síochána is run. However, that is precisely the opposite direction to the one in which we should be moving. It will cause untold trouble in the years ahead if we end up with accountability and tight control but also end up with a Garda force that does not perform as well as we would wish. I realise that is not what the Minister wants but that is why I am questioning whether there is a need for such control in that area.

As regards the new approach to Garda complaints, it is vital that we do not just pass the Bill into law and then forget about it. There is a natural tendency among legislators to think that once the President has put her name to a Bill their work is done and that whatever problems the particular Bill addresses will automatically be solved, but life is not like that. Very often, as soon as a new system is put into place, unforeseen weaknesses are revealed. Such shortcomings could easily be put right by tweaking the original legislation but we rarely revisit legislation to see whether it has worked out exactly as we intended. I hope that will not happen in this case. We need to keep a close eye on how the Bill, once enacted, will work in practice. The simple acid test will be whether it succeeds in restoring public confidence to a point where people in general can say they trust the Garda Síochána. Until that has been achieved we still have a job to do. My main concern is whether the Bill will interfere with the performance of the Garda Síochána. The Minister said it better than I could have, when he spoke about the pride we have in the Garda Síochána. We are very proud of the Garda Síochána, which was established in 1922. It is an unarmed force of 12,000 catering for a population of 4 million and its record is very good. Let us ensure that the job gardaí have to do is not hindered or restricted in any way. We have had a problem with accountability and have, quite rightly, introduced this Bill. I hope, however, that when we examine the Bill in detail we will find a means to ensure that while accountability is achieved, performance will not be hindered in any way.