Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I thank Members for their contributions. Senator Tuffy asked why the Morris report was delayed. Under the Act that permitted the three modules I was under obligation to seek the instruction of the High Court to ensure the report did not interfere with Sergeant White's trial. When I received the report I applied for this direction and was told to await the completion of the trial. The trial finished after the Dáil had risen so I could not bring the reports before the House until the autumn session. This was a matter of law and out of my hands.

When this session began I sought to bring the reports before the Houses but a number of key Members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann were involved in the committee investigating Mr. Brian Curtin. They asked me to delay the debate to allow them to be present and participate in the debate.

Civilianisation is of major importance. I accept the point made by Senator Maurice Hayes regarding outsourcing. Support for administrative tasks can be made available to the Garda Síochána. It is not a matter of producing yellow pack people and filling desks. People and skills must be matched to civilian support staff. We must seek people suitable to administrative positions. In other areas the entire activity can be outsourced. There is no reason why a garda should stamp passport application forms or deal with shotgun licences when a core administrative staff could deal with it.

There is great scope for civilianising the force. To use Senator Hayes's phrase, the wind of change is at my back. The time has come to set out an ambitious programme for accelerated civilianisation. A 21-week cycle would be preferable to a 21-year cycle although that might be too ambitious. It was suggested that people like the cushy numbers but most members of the force, particularly younger members, wish to have policing tasks. They want to tell their families they are policing the country, not sitting in an office administering backroom operations of the policing function.

The role of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform was mentioned, a very important point. I do not believe the Department has had the happiest of roles in its relationship with An Garda Síochána. There was a time when Peter Berry was the archetypal Secretary General of the Department of Justice and he had a completely hands-on approach. Nothing happened in the depot without his knowledge, every file of importance was reported to him and there were situation reports flooding in to him from around the country every day. He gave direction as to what was to happen and the Commissioner was in a very subordinate role, with the Department in the driving seat.

The pendulum swung completely the opposite way. When I was appointed Attorney General and the Donegal business came into sharp focus, I as the law officer of the State conducted the civil proceedings on the State's behalf and received complaints in that capacity from people who turned out to be victims of action by the Garda Síochána. Both my predecessor as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, and I were told we did not as a right have access to reports because the view was taken at that stage, curiously, that the Garda were in privity with the Director of Public Prosecutions, and it is was effectively a matter of grace and favour to us as to what we would be told about the progress of investigations.

The foot was put down on the part of myself and the Minister in order to restore the balance and indicate that the Minister was accountable to Dáil Éireann, with the Attorney General being the law officer of the State charged with defending these civil proceedings. We were entitled to know each and every bit as much as the Director of Public Prosecutions. It was not a matter of seeking the permission of that office to see an investigative file. The balance had to be restored to that point, and it is an accountability mechanism.

There is also a question of engagement. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has its own internal revolution to undertake to ensure it has appropriate monitoring mechanisms so ministerial accountability can be real rather than something at a distance or semi-detached.

Another point I wish to make deserves a bit of time and I ask the House to bear with me on it. There have been demands that the daily control of the Garda Síochána should be transferred to a so-called police or Garda authority. This proposal has been canvassed on and off for many years and in the context of the preparation and development of the Garda Síochána Bill I indicated to the House that I gave very close thought and examination to the idea.

The comparison normally made is that such a board exists in Northern Ireland, and as Senator Tuffy stated, it represents best practice. I have made my view on this issue clear in the Oireachtas on a number of occasions, including the debate on the Garda Síochána Bill and most recently in my statement to the Dáil on Garda accountability on 29 November. I take this opportunity to put my views on the issue on record.

I will first consider why Northern Ireland has chosen to go the route of a policing board rather than have direct political accountability for the police as we have in this jurisdiction. Through most of its history, Northern Ireland had a police service — the RUC — which was perceived by many as being under the directorship of the Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs and former Unionist administrations. After direct rule was introduced, the police were answerable to the Secretary of State, a politician not directly elected by the people of Northern Ireland. Although there was political accountability in one sense, it was not to a politician from Northern Ireland.

Following the report of the Patten commission, the policing board existing in Northern Ireland is intended to make policing function accountable. The Patten commission recommended a majority of members of the board be from the Northern Ireland Assembly. This is a point not mentioned in any analysis I hear south of the Border. Ten of the 19 members are members of the Assembly chosen on d'Hondt principles from across the parties and without ministerial involvement. The system currently deliberately seeks to avoid the police being accountable to a Member of the Assembly from one political party, reflecting the concerns which spring from the historical experience of partisan policing in a divided society.

When people speak of a policing authority in this jurisdiction, do they want a case where, on a d'Hondt principle, Dáil Éireann will be represented on a policing authority, or do they want the great and the good to be selected by some other process, with an apolitical policing board put in place? People use the phrase "independent policing board" but from whom is it independent? The policing board is not independent of the political parties in Northern Ireland, it is directly representative of these parties. We should bear that point in mind.

The case in the United Kingdom is often quoted in support of the concept of a police authority, but that system should again be viewed in the context of the policing service it oversees. The UK has a regional police structure, with 43 police forces in England and Wales, as well as eight in Scotland. There are plans to reduce that number. It would not be possible for the British Home Secretary or the Parliament in Westminster to oversee all those forces.

There is no regional political structure to which they could be held accountable. There are political appointees such as local authority members who serve on the various policing boards in the United Kingdom, covering the regional constabularies. For example, the Metropolitan Police Service in London is not responsible to the city's mayor, Ken Livingstone, but the Home Secretary.

I wish to put on record that a police authority is not found in the vast majority of Western democracies. Where police are organised at a national level they are normally accountable to a Minister of central Government. This applies in the USA with the FBI, in Canada with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and most European countries. Reference was made to a former mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani, and that city's police department reports to the mayor, who is the head of the executive of the city. The reason this is so is that policing is one of the most fundamental activities of organised society. People in other jurisdictions must share my view that police should be directly accountable to the democratically elected representatives of the communities they serve.

We have one national police force in this country, which is part of the Executive arm of the State and which is answerable, through the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, to the Houses of the Oireachtas. I should make the point that the issues of management and accountability are evident here. I hope I have common ground with Senator Cummins in that I have no problem with the notion of changing the way in which the Garda Síochána is managed so there is a board in the force, on which lay people sit, which is the board of management of the Garda Síochána. We are moving in that direction.

I would have a major problem if we set up a body equivalent to the Health Service Executive, which would lie between the Minister and the Garda Síochána, with the Garda serving two masters. One group could then announce policies, priorities and what is being done, with the Minister finding out what was happening in the force by accident or on a semi-detached basis.