Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This Bill also is welcome and it was interesting to hear Senator Byrne indicate that he - and I imagine Fianna Fáil - welcome it but will seek some changes. I hope the Minister of State has a listening attitude to any proposals that arise on Committee Stage. Most people in Ireland have a high regard for the Garda Síochána and ever since its establishment in the early 1920s, it has managed to maintain that well. Personally, I had a major experience 33 years ago when anybody who was in the supermarket business was under threat of kidnap. Members may recall that at least three of the major supermarket people had been attacked or kidnapped. The Garda came to the conclusion that my family was a likely target. I was not the target because apparently, I was the one who could get the money out but the children or my wife might had been targeted. We went through a number of weeks in which we had the special branch living in the house with us and watching us. My regard and that of our family and friends for the professionalism of the Garda Síochána at that time has not changed since. Moreover, it appears to me that such professionalism instils confidence and is capable of being recognised by the public here.

I welcome any moves to improve the public service offered by the Garda. Members should stress today that it should not be considered a police force but a service to citizens. I was concerned when the former Garda Commissioner referred to the Garda as his "force". I am glad the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, and the Minister of State have stated that preparation of the scheme of a Bill to provide for the establishment of an independent new policing authority is in progress. I would like to hear from the Minister of State as to what countries the Government has consulted in preparing the police authority and on improving the work of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has raised a number of concerns with the current set-up of GSOC, including the fact that its mandatory powers of investigation remain limited to a narrow range of cases involving "death or serious harm". All other cases involving, for instance, allegations of sexual offences or excessive use of force during Garda operations effectively may be referred to the Garda Commissioner for investigation by Garda members. It recommends that mandatory investigations by GSOC should be broadened substantially to include all complaints made to GSOC unless that complaint is suitable for a mediated resolution. It would be reasonable to amend section 91 of the Principal Act and other relevant sections to mean that GSOC would have mandatory powers to investigate serious sexual offences, serious corruption and other assaults. Can the Minister of State indicate whether the Government would be open to an amendment to this effect? If the Government is not open to this, I would be interested to hear the reasons it is not. I welcome the new powers of GSOC contained in this Bill to be able to investigate a Garda Commissioner, which is sensible. Why then does the Bill provide that effectively, it will be up to the Minister to sanction an investigation of a Garda Commissioner? I am not satisfied that this is an acceptable separation of powers and GSOC should have more autonomy in this area. While I acknowledge that this issue has been discussed, it is worth putting on the record.

I will take this opportunity to speak briefly about wider reform of the Garda. It often is overlooked that the fundamental goal of policing actually is crime prevention. One does not hear that often enough. More than 200 years ago, the father of the modern police service, Robert Peel, said that crime prevention is the core of policing. However, this concept needs repeating as I seldom hear it said by politicians in the media. Even the Garda rarely mentions it and I believe that in a time of less manpower and fewer resources, the Garda must go back to a crime prevention-based police service. Crime prevention is not a reaction to burglaries or crime and is not a person calling up a Garda station but is about the Garda being proactive. It is the approach that involves going to businesses and giving them security advice, for example, on locks. It is meeting with older people on security advice or identifying owners of certain cars and making them aware. It is going to the home of an older person and installing alarms to the Garda station and giving advice there. That sort of policing has diminished in recent years because the efforts, quite understandably, have been on catching the criminals. I refer instead to managing to take steps to prevent the criminals from having that opportunity.

One question is whether we are looking at innovation. For instance, in New Zealand, the entire police service is now moving to what they call a "crime prevention first" approach. It is based on research such as that of the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, which looks at the science of crime and thus new ways to prevent crime. This category of crime prevention focuses on criminal opportunities rather than the circumstances of the offender. There, the system aims to make possible criminal targets less vulnerable and to provide assistance and information to both potential and actual victims. In Ireland, we have a real tendency to go blindly down a path instead of following best practice, for instance, from our European neighbours. Members should consider the United Kingdom, where one police service has pioneered a technique of "predictive mapping" of burglaries to deploy staff to high-risk areas at specific times and, together with other measures, this has brought about a significant fall in that type of crime. I wonder whether that is being done here or whether, because of the difficulty of having enough money to pay a sufficient number of gardaí, we are not concentrating on the right things.

In the context of crime prevention, Members should consider that a large proportion of all crimes are committed against crime victims who have been victimised previously in a phenomenon known as repeat victimisation. One classic study found that just 1% of people experienced 59% of personal crimes, including violence, while 2% of people experienced 41% of property crimes. These are very interesting figures and this means that bank robbers are much more likely to return to the same branch if they get away with a lot of money the first time. In this system, the Garda would visit that same branch - which is more likely to get robbed - and help the people there to introduce measures to stop it happening again. Perhaps the Garda is doing this but Members do not know about it. The main conclusion of this famous study is that it shows that repeat victimisation and crime can be prevented and in the study, through prevention activities, crimes decreased by one sixth in the prevention condition when compared with the normal condition. The decreases were greatest, up to one fifth, for programmes that were designed to prevent repeat burglaries, both residential and commercial. I believe the Garda should be taking this international evidence on board much more.

The situation in which the concept of prevention has been lost has been identified in other European Union countries. Unfortunately, it has not been highlighted here. A major report on policing in the United Kingdom found that only one of the 190 modules of basic training that all new recruits undergo focuses on crime prevention. Sir Denis O'Connor, the retired UK Chief Inspector of Constabulary made a great impact in that regard. Personally, I would like to ascertain whether Sir Denis O'Connor could be hired by the Government to undertake a thorough analysis of the Garda. I believe that many senior gardaí would not like that to happen and that Sir Denis O'Connor would most probably be shocked at what he would find. If it cost €100,000 or more to get someone like that to do a report on the Garda, it would be money well spent. Can the Minister of State indicate whether the Government would be open to get some expert from the outside with a history of success to carry out such an analysis?

I wish to raise one final idea from Switzerland, where the focus of the police is on prevention. There, plain-clothes Police Judiciaireprovide what is known as street intelligence to uniformed police by radio. They blend in with crowds, working at street-level to often anticipate such crimes as robbery and drug dealing and then act accordingly and quickly. It is a modern, agile, tailored approach which is backed up with the latest technology. While the public calls for a garda walking in the beat in high-visibility jackets, this actual visibility of the Garda means that a thief simply waits until the gardaí pass before committing a crime. The Swiss example of prioritising plain-clothes police is counter-intuitive but it is one that has been proven to work much better.

Dublin could benefit from that.

This is worthwhile legislation and I congratulate the Government on bringing it forward. However, I still believe there are some elements that we could improve further. We are missing a major aspect of the future of the Garda Síochána, that of crime prevention. We are not concentrating on prevention but on detection. That said, we should make sure that in bringing this Bill through the House, we make it the best legislation possible.