Joanna Tuffy (Labour)

Amendment No. 35, which deals with the three year review, is welcome. The professional standards unit is welcome in itself but as Senator Cummins said, it does not go far enough. If we want a review, it should be an independent review. We are still perpetuating the practice of the gardaí reviewing their own performance. There is nothing wrong with that. It is welcome that people would review their own performance but an independent review would be much better.

I welcome the Minister's statement when speaking on these amendments that he would consider the Labour Party's idea of a commission to review policing as a whole. I hope he does that in the near future. We need to examine statistics, performance indicators and so on. Many bodies carry out that type of internal review but the Garda Síochána, which is involved in detecting crime as well as all the other various functions gardaí perform, must be independently reviewed. The ideal way to do that, from the Labour Party's point of view, would be an independent policing authority which could initiate such reviews. Such an independent body could monitor the performance of gardaí in addition to the Garda doing that also. The Police Service of Northern Ireland carries out its own reviews but a review is also done by the independent policing board.

Amendments Nos. 56 and 63 are welcome in that they remove certain functions from the Garda Commissioner and give them to the Minister. That is probably welcome in terms of accountability but it would be better if that type of exercise were done by an independent policing authority, with an overview by the Minister. It is still centralised Executive control whereas many sound commentators, including Denis Bradley when he attended the joint Oireachtas committee, argue that we must remove the Executive control and put in place an independent body that would be between the Minister and the Garda. Such a body could do many of the functions the Minister is providing for in this legislation. There is no major issue in the amendments, which are generally welcome, but they do not go far enough in terms of reforming the Garda structures.