Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I have considerable sympathy for the general proposition that there seems to be a creeping policy of excluding Members of the Oireachtas from virtually anything that moves. Any such exclusion must be justified on an individual basis. I agree that every time there is a draft Bill, this little item should not appear from the word processor concerning any State body. There is a reason to go down this road now, however. The proposed architecture of accountability includes an Oireachtas joint policing committee. Members of the Oireachtas will be able to participate through that committee in a direct, one-to-one relationship with the Garda Síochána. Therefore, there will be an opportunity for Members of the Oireachtas, not simply as members of the Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights, but as members of a policing committee, to become involved with the accountability of the Garda Síochána to the Houses of the Oireachtas.

In addition, from time to time, members of that committee will join the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which has a majority of political appointments according to the d'Hondt principles, in an all-Ireland policing forum. That is the second item we wish to put in place, if we can. I do not know whether that was envisaged by the Patten report, but it is envisaged now as part of the criminal law process.

I want public representatives, be they Members of the Oireachtas or members of local authorities, to play a full part in the life of the Garda Síochána through the local policing committees. As Senator Maurice Hayes said, however, this is a different thing. It is an executive management board which I would envisage meeting once a week to discuss radios, the fixed-point penalty system, recruitment of the Garda Reserve Force and other items. It would assist the full-time Garda members of the executive board and would also assist the person at deputy commissioner level who will be a lay person, not a garda, under the proposals emanating from Senator Maurice Hayes's committee. I am grateful to Senator Maurice Hayes for chairing that group. The fact that he is a Member of this House in no way debarred him from assisting the Government or the Garda Síochána on that issue.

On this occasion, however, I offer a justification for not having Members of the Oireachtas involved. What would the public perception be, for instance, if the Government were to put two backbenchers onto the executive management board, even if they were competent business people who knew how to run a company? If I, as Minister, chose Senator Tom Morrissey, who runs his own business, to sit on the Garda executive board, would the public say that was a good idea or a bad one? Somehow, I do not think they would say it was a good idea. They would say that politics should be kept out of this and that one should not appoint to this body people with whom one appears to have a political connection. They would say a person sitting at parliamentary party meetings with the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform should not act as a member of the executive board of An Garda Síochána. The board would be weakened if Members of the Oireachtas sat on it because it would compromise them in the eyes of the public. That is not to say that I do not fully agree with the proposition that the word processor in the Office of the Senior Parliamentary Counsel, which seems to knock Members of the Oireachtas off everything, should not be the default mode in legislation.