Maurice Hayes (Independent)

If people see gardaí on patrol it embodies the value of the watchdog principle, but there is no point in having a watchdog if it is starved to death. This is as much a matter for the paymasters as it is for the Minister, so the Government must be prepared to put resources into this area.

If I were the Minister, I would put a great deal of faith into another instrument of the Bill, namely, the police inspectorate. Those people should bring to bear the best of international practice, although at the moment they will have a job in establishing a benchmark from which to move.

I would still argue for the establishment of a police authority. The fact that politicians are members of the Northern Ireland Police Authority was referred to earlier in the debate. The reason we put politicians on that authority was to make them take responsibility. In that way, they could not sit on the ditch and criticise the people who were responsible for policing, making appalling and impossible demands on policing without having to take some responsibility for it themselves. The Minister has strong views on this matter and I will shortly deal with those. In the North, we thought it was important to have a kind of tripartite structure between the Minister, the police and the policing board. It does create tensions and makes it difficult to work, but the system is none the worse for that because people are conscious they must work within that matrix.

I fully appreciate the Minister's difficulty in that he is responsible for State security and, therefore, cannot delegate that role to a police authority. That happens in many other jurisdictions also, however. None of us wants a separate political police force or secret service, because the work should be done by ordinary gardaí. It does create a difficulty for the Garda Commissioner or the Chief Constable of the PSNI who are working, in a way, to two masters. They deal with a policing board for what I might call ordinary crime in civil society, while they must deal with a Minister in other cases. That is not impossible, however, and it is a risk worth taking. It would insulate the police from the political process, while insulating the political process from policing. I hope that can be done.

I wish to take this opportunity to express my disquiet about one other aspect of the Garda Síochána Bill. It is the fact that in order to gain access to some Garda stations, at least, the ombudsman would have to ask the Minister to ask the Commissioner, who could appeal to somebody else as to whether or not he or she could get in. The Morris report on the situation in Donegal showed what can happen if one does not get in quickly when people are being held. I appreciate that what the Minister has done represents progress from where we were at the beginning. He has said that he would designate major Garda stations, stating that for those stations alone — particularly if it concerns a death in custody — the ombudsman could ask the Minister to consult with the Garda Commissioner for permission to gain entry. Those are likely to be Garda stations where members of the Special Branch are based. Since those people have access to arms, those are the places where the type of things that create disquiet and trouble are more likely to occur than in ordinary Garda stations. While it is necessary to protect the integrity of intelligence, it is also necessary for the public to have faith in the ability of the ombudsman to go into Garda stations. In his concern to protect the information, however, the Minister is actually protecting the premises.

The way this works in other jurisdictions — it certainly worked when I was Ombudsman in Northern Ireland — was that the Ombudsman had access to anything and could go in. The Minister could stop the publication of sensitive information, however. That system worked very well and the ban on publication of information never arose in practice. It is not something that is going to arise because one hopes that sort of case would not occur too often. The symbolism of the ombudsman having to seek permission to go into those very Garda stations where most of the trouble is likely to happen, is not positive. We should find some formula for dealing with that matter. It could be dealt with, for example, by having a protocol between the Garda Commissioner and the ombudsman, so that the ombudsman is not sending every Tom, Dick and Harry clumping along in hobnail boots to look after these matters. Carefully designated people could be entrusted to do the work.

I congratulate Mr. Justice Morris on his report. I support the Minister who has been courageous in taking on this matter. I do not think anyone else will apply the same pressure regarding this matter, and it would be a great pity if we were to lose momentum now.