Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

As my colleague rightly said, there was an agreement between the British and Irish Governments to allow members of the Garda Síochána join the new PSNI and a substantial number of existing and new officers have been recruited from this jurisdiction to the new PSNI. That is welcome but Senator Cummins made a useful point on this matter. On the issue of race relations, for instance, it could be argued — rightly, in my view — that much experience could be gained by allowing, either by secondment or direct recruitment, members of police forces in major cities like London, Manchester or Bradford, which has had to deal with the issue of race relations 20 years before we had to deal with it in this jurisdiction, join the Garda Síochána. The same argument could be made in regard to, for example, drug trafficking. We could learn much from what Dutch police officers have learned over a significant period of time.

Given the positive co-operation, good intelligence gathering and sharing of surveillance and intelligence information at EU level, the Garda could gain significantly by recruiting members of forces in other EU jurisdictions or by taking them on secondment. This issue should be addressed. A modern police force requires from time to time the ability to take on people with new ideas and a great deal could be learned from the experiences of police forces in other jurisdictions. Ireland is only now going through many of the problems experienced in large cities and countries over the past 20 years. A great deal could be learned from such recruitment. The amendment may not be useful or acceptable but the proposal needs to be expounded. If the Minister can address the issue through another means, so be it.