Thread by @drvconway

General scheme of the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill now published justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/…

It's almost 400 pages. There'll be no hot-takes here.

Early up its providing means for police to conduct prosecutions, despite the Commission calling this a non-core duty that should be reallocated to another agency

It's got a range of sections on a new internal board for An Garda Síochána

Really gonna have to think about this. Does it imply there are things for which the Commissioner is accountable to no-one?

Other than that accountability of the Commissioner remains entirely political (head 28). Government retaining a lot of control

Government can issue written directives to the Commissioner concerning any matter. Really hard to see how that sits with the independence mentioned above.

Head 30(3) The Garda Commissioner shall, in performing his or her functions under this Act, comply with any directive issued to the Commissioner under this head.
(I said no hot-takes, but seriously?)

Oh and government is reclaiming control over the process of the appointment of the Garda Commissioner under Head 19 (Policing Authority has been running the competition since it was created, but back to gov now)

For lower ranks, the Commissioner will get to decide the numbers (with approval of Minister and consent of DPER). That's a change

The Policing Authority will determine and revise policing priorities (as it currently does)

Both annual 'service' plan and strategic plan are written by Commissioner, adopted by the Internal Board and approved by the Minister (currently Authority has a role in these which is to be removed)

The Bill creates the potential for, but not an obligation for, annual and multi annual capital plans which is to be adopted by the Internal Board (good to have these plans, a real shame not to the Authority giving an independent input to this)

The internal Board will develop a governance framework document

So the internal Board (which will existing in addition to a Policing Authority) will be comprised of 8 people with the following expertises. The Board will be adopting the policing plan, but has no community/crime expertise

A lot of it's functions will be very governance in orientation, but it's also overseeing systems for compliance with human rights, without any human rights expertise

Policing Authority has performed a lot of these functions, but they are being moved to this new board now. It's confusing imho. A new layer of governance, that will be internal, with more limited expertise. Is it appropriate for that to be internal? I don't believe so

Interesting: The Garda Commissioner shall ensure that, in respect of each specified period, statistical information concerning offences, criminal proceedings and the state of crime in the State is compiled and stored.
Hope this is made much broader ---

--- we've a huge problem of a lack of published data, like numbers stopped and searched, arrested, detained, interviewed, demographics of those people and so on

Policing Authority will still be responsible for the Code of Ethics

Head 69 gives the Minister power to create special inquiries into administration, practice or procedure. unpopular take - if your systems of oversight and accountability were working well you wouldn't need additional special mechanisms.

A huge part of the Act is about Community Safety. minister must create a national community safety strategy to
serve as an overarching policy framework and programme of actions to
underpin a whole of government approach to enhancing community safety
including –

(a) promote multi-disciplinary approaches & inter-agency collaboration to enhance community safety;
(b) promote engagement by communities in development & implementation of strategies to enhance community safety;
(c) support coordination & cohesion with other relevant strategies.

The Policing Authority will be renamed the Policing and Community Safety Authority. There'll be 9 members who should reflect expertise in a whole host of wonderful things from human rights to social work, community safety and so on

The PCSA will do oversight of how the guards perform against their plans and so on, and do inspections, as the Garda Inspectorate is to be merged within it.

The PCSA will be required to have at least 4 meetings with the Commissioner in public (as the Authority currently has)

Lovely to see provision for the transfer of staff from the Policing Authority and the Inspectorate to the new body. Will be a huge relief for all those currently working there to see that in the Bill.

GSOC is to be renamed the Office of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman. This is disappointing -the Commission found people thought it was part of the guards because of its name and recommended a change that excluded GS

There'll be a Garda Ombudsman and a Deputy Garda Ombudsman (why not a Policing Ombudsman??)

This is a change from the three-person Commission at present. This was much debated in 2005 (NI has a single person Ombudsman). Interesting to see the flip now.

Pausing now for meetings - I'll resume this thread tomorrow (obviously everyone's just dying for it)