Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Members will or should know that from today, the Policing Authority and the Garda Síochána Inspectorate will be dissolved and a new policing and community safety authority, PCSA, will be established. This transition is happening as part of a wider policing reform programme called A Policing Service for Our Future and comes as a result of the commencement of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024. Since its formation in January 2016, the Policing Authority has been committed to overseeing the performance of An Garda Síochána and has championed equality, diversity and inclusion both within the policing service and across our communities. That is an important point we must acknowledge.

I express my gratitude to everyone who has worked and supported the Policing Authority over the past nine years. Through their collaboration, trust and shared commitment, better policing has been made possible. I also thank Helen Hall, its CEO, in particular for the enormous leadership role she took on with this task. Since the Policing Authority was established in 2016, it has held 150 authority meetings with the Garda Commissioner, of which 44 were public. It has appointed 346 senior Garda members to Garda staff. It has also had more than 260 engagements with stakeholder groups and organisations and received more than 3,500 consultations and responses.

I ask the Leader for a debate on the local community safety partnership. He will be aware, as are many of us who represent and work closely with our city and county councillors, of the disquiet about how these partnerships were to be established, overhanging issues that have not been resolved, and councillors who indicated their desire to chair some of these partnerships and are still waiting to hear what is going on. The whole thing has become rudderless. For most of us, who are elected by our city and councillors, we owe it to them to champion that issue of community policing and local community safety partnerships. I ask for a debate with the Minister for Justice on this specific matter in the coming weeks.