Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I must make a confession here. I have always had a soft spot for the present Minister, even though I disagree with him on everything.

This is worthy legislation. As a long standing Member of the House, I appreciate the fact that the Minister has chosen to be here himself for all of the debate so far. I hope he has heard a few things that added to his knowledge although it is not easy to persuade him he needs to have his knowledge added to.

I have a very ambivalent view of the Garda Síochána based on personal experience. In 1969, I was at a housing demonstration in Dublin. We got a bit disorderly and what was described as the minimum amount of force necessary was used to clear the streets. I limped around for a week afterwards with a delicate part of the lower half of my anatomy somewhat bruised from a garda baton. Whatever about the rights or wrongs of the incident, what educated me was the fact that the then Minister for Justice appeared in the Dáil two days later and categorically denied that batons had been drawn. As I limped around with the evidence on my own person of the baton that had been drawn, I became very sceptical about categorical denials. Looking back at those days and the way the world has developed since, the level of force used was probably far less excessive than what I saw on an infamous video of the Reclaim the Streets demonstration. There was considerable discipline involved at the time.

On the other hand, in my experience with the Simon Community, most members of the Garda Síochána showed an understanding and sympathy for and flexibility towards homeless people that would have been a model for people in what would be more appropriately described as the caring professions. They had an ability to be patient with people who were actually trying to take the head off them on occasions, and to be good humoured about it. It appears to me that they recognised the people they were dealing with. People were forever being charged with being drunk and disorderly, but most of them were being charged because it was the only way they could be detained for their own safety in a Garda station. They were usually fined for default. Most of them never quite ended up in jail, even though they never paid the fines. On a human level — this was 25 years ago — dealing with people on an individual basis, the gardaí with whom I came into contact were extraordinarily patient and flexible. I want to put that on the record because I may appear to have been poking fun at them earlier.

However, incidents occur that need to go on the record. I do not want to say anything that would identify an individual but I had an unnerving experience at a meeting in Cork a considerable number of years ago. A senior member of the Garda Síochána in the city was present at the meeting relating to local issues. Towards the end of the meeting, the safety of teenagers walking home in the area was raised, which moved on to the issue of child abuse. The senior official, with the authority of the Garda, said, "We as members of the Garda Síochána know two things. One, that the vast majority of child abuse offences are carried out by homosexuals and, two, a huge part of the child abuse thing is an attempt by certain forces to undermine the sanctity of the Irish family".

One cannot legislate to prevent people having opinions, nor would I wish to. The more public dialogue there is, in which people have to explain and justify the views they hold, the less likely one is to have opinions like that permeating at senior levels in any organisation. I am sure the Garda Síochána was not alone in having senior members who liked to believe the less pleasant parts of our history were being made up by people with an agenda.

The lesson I would learn from these three anecdotes is the importance of openness and the necessity for a clear structure of accountability. I welcome the process of investigation which will now be set up under the ombudsman commission, even though I have reservations about some aspects of it. I hope members of the Garda will not see this as a threat. Many of us who work in the public service must live with forms of investigation and inquiry which are much the same as what is proposed here. I appreciate that gardaí are in a unique role, but members of the Garda must accept that with their unique role come unique powers, including, for example, the power to arrest.

It is disturbing to see the annual report of the sums of money paid out as a result of legal actions taken against the Garda. Many gardaí believe that many complaints are malicious. Nevertheless, it is a fact that significant sums of money are being paid out. Greater transparency and accountability, including mediation processes, would help. I once had an interesting experience of going into a Garda station on behalf of the Simon Community in Cork to make a complaint that a member of the Garda had assaulted someone. One would not want to repeat the experience very often. The Garda station was full of gardaí, all sitting around the fire. I had to say at the counter that I wanted to make a complaint that a member of the force assaulted someone. One could feel the icicles descend and the attention of everyone in the station deflecting away from the afternoon's football match to what was being said at the counter.

We need to move on from a position whereby a complaint is seen as a threat. It is one of the more regrettable facts in recent times that members of the Garda appear to feel, out of what I would regard as a misguided sense of loyalty, unable to co-operate fully with the Garda Complaints Board about the Reclaim the Streets event, when it was apparent no one was available to identify anyone else. I can understand this, as would any member of a profession. However, we are entitled to ask the gardaí for a commitment to proper operation of both administrative and statutory procedures. In this case it appears that did not happen.

Some of us in this House are forever criticising the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Ever since I noticed in the IPA Year Book that the Secretary General of that Department until quite recently would not allow his photograph to be published, I began to believe there was a peculiar attitude to national security in the Department which was not replicated in the Defence Forces or the Garda Síochána. Is the Minister sure there is a need for this particular protection for Garda stations where he believes there are documents relating to matters of national security? What does he think would happen if people carrying out an investigation on behalf of the commission came across these documents? There is a very strict warning in the Freedom of Information Act, which I have no doubt was inserted at the behest of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, that judges who look at documents must be very careful that nobody else sees them. There seems to be an implied presumption in this that those in a certain area of the Department know better than anyone else. We all recognise the importance of national security, but national security is better secured by convincing people that what is being secured and kept secret in the name of national security is just that and not a convenient cover-up for assembling information that perhaps might have been acquired through circumstances that some people might suspect to be legally dodgy. I do not know. We will not know as long as we have this particular obsession. I would like the Minister, perhaps on Committee Stage, to elaborate within the bounds of national security as to precisely what sort of information might be jeopardised, or what might be jeopardised if these provisions or restrictions were to be removed.