Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. We have not had a Bill of this nature since 1924 and, on that basis, it is timely. When I entered this House ten years ago, I found myself looking at each Bill to see if I could view it from a different perspective. With Bills such as this, I found myself comparing their provisions to best business practice in normal industry.

It is more than 20 years since I became chairman of An Post. I recall joining the organisation, which had been a State body, part of the Civil Service, and which then became a semi-State body under an independent board. Once the shackle and the tight controls of the Civil Service were removed, the same people in An Post, when given the opportunity to show initiative, did so and proved their ingenuity. I would love to think that by means of any Bill such as this, we could do something similar. I will consider the Bill from that point of view.

I welcome this Bill not least because it is long overdue. I see it as a necessary attempt to restore public trust in the Garda Síochána, a task hanging over us for some time, and one which we have largely ignored in recent years. According to recent surveys, a very large proportion of the people of this country no longer trusts the Garda. That is an appalling situation and a contrast to what prevailed in the past. This should not take us by surprise, because for many years it has been clear that the existing mechanism for handling complaints against the Garda was fatally flawed. It was not able to do the job expected of it. Instead of addressing the problem, as a nation we let it fester. The evidence for that, if it were needed, was clearly shown in the massive sums in claims against the Garda that the Government had to settle in recent years.

I am on the side of the Garda Síochána. I am a Garda fan, if there is such a thing. I am particularly proud of the kind of policing tradition that we built up in this country since independence. The Minister referred to that today, the tradition of a small, almost totally unarmed force accepted by the population as being on its side, with very deep roots in the community it serves. In this age, to police a modern nation of 4 million people with only 12,000 gardaí is quite an achievement. However, that success is built entirely on public trust. One can have that kind of tradition only if there is a very large reservoir of public confidence in the police force. Part of that confidence comes from knowing that whenever wrongdoing occurs, as it inevitably will in any organisation, it will be dealt with firmly and fairly. That some wrongdoing is inevitable springs from the very nature of the job. Much police work is such that most of us are glad we do not have to do it, but somebody must do it and they must have special powers. We rely on their good character as well as on those rules and regulations to ensure they do not abuse those powers. Human nature being what it is, it would be unreasonable to expect that abuse will never occur. What happens when it occurs is all important. If it is detected immediately and dealt with firmly and fairly, the damage is limited. If it is not nipped in the bud, it will go on creating damage in the force for a long time and will have quite an impact over a wider area. If one or two bad apples find they can get away with unacceptable behaviour, it has a negative effect on the rest of the force and it grows in seriousness as time goes on.

Not least of the serious implications is that unpunished bad behaviour swiftly destroys public confidence and trust not only in individual gardaí, but in the force as a whole. Before long, the Garda Síochána and the country suffer as a result of the wrongdoing of a small number of people. That is why it is in the interests of gardaí as well as the public to have a strong and totally independent system to deal with complaints against gardaí. We have lacked such a system and recent figures suggest we are paying the price. I welcome this Bill as a means of filling that gap.

Many people will argue that the system now proposed is neither strong nor independent enough. Perhaps some of the reservations will be met as the Bill goes through the legislative process. It has already been improved since the heads of the Bill were published last year, and all credit to the Minister for publishing them and for listening to some of the criticisms made subsequently, as mentioned by Senator Terry. I have no doubt the Bill can be further improved in this and the other House and I hope the Minister is open to further change.

I am embarrassed when people point out the difference between what is proposed here and the new arrangements in Northern Ireland. I would have thought that following the Good Friday Agreement, we would have fallen over ourselves to keep in exact step with any changes that took place in the North but, as we found out with the Human Rights Commission, the Government seems to attach little importance to creating parity between the two jurisdictions in such matters. I regret that and think it is a lost opportunity and one that weakens our hand in dealing with people from the North. I could understand, if we had a police tribunal, the need to take the security service out of it. There would have to be a solution in that regard. It is a pity that area has been overlooked.

This is a wide-ranging Bill that deals with much more than just a new system for complaints against gardaí. In effect, it sets out a new charter for how the Garda Síochána is to be run and, particularly, the relationship between the Garda Commissioner and the Minister and his Department. As somebody in business looking at the Garda Síochána as if it was a company with shareholders, a board of directors, a chairman and a chief executive, I admit that I am not too pleased by some of the provisions in the Bill — Senator Jim Walsh referred to some of them. They seem to reduce rather than increase the Commissioner's freedom to do his job, which is not what we should be doing in this day and age. As I went through the Bill, I asked myself how the powers of the Commissioner stacked up against the powers of a chief executive officer in another occupation. Again, the answer is that they compare badly. I am not talking about a chief executive officer in a private company; I think the comparison is equally bad to chief executives in the public sector, such as the chief executive of a commercial semi-State body.

For example, if the Commissioner wants to spend €1 million on motor cars — I am sure he probably spends more than that when he buys them — it is right that he should have to fight for his budget with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Finance which lurks behinds the other Department's shoulders. Having got his €1 million or whatever, it should be up to the commissioner to decide whether to buy Ford or Toyota motor cars. That should have nothing whatsoever to do with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform or the Minister who should stay a mile away from the day to day administration of the Garda Síochána. I gather — I would like to hear the answer — what would happen is that the Commissioner would have to go back to the Minister——