A special Oireachtas security committee should be set up to monitor the Garda Síochána on an ongoing basis, according to the Fine Gael spokesman on Justice, Mr Jim O'Keeffe.
His suggestion comes amid growing calls for greater accountability mechanisms for the force, in the wake of the interim Morris report on the activities of certain of its members in Co Donegal.
The report found serious lapses of Garda management, and questioned the evidence of a number of individual gardaí.
At the weekend the president of the Human Rights Commission, Dr Maurice Manning, suggested that the Oireachtas Commission should devise a committee system with teeth that would have a real input into supervising the Garda.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has stated his opposition to any Garda authority, or the creation of any body that would lessen the responsibility of the Minister for Justice for the force.
In the forthcoming Garda Bill, he has proposed that the Garda Commissioner be responsible to the Oireachtas for budgeting and general management, and be called to report to relevant Oireachtas committees on these matters.
However, Mr O'Keeffe told The Irish Times: "There needs to be an outside body, external to the Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice. The Garda reporting to the Department of Justice is all within the one circle.
"I envisage a small working all-party committee. Its main function would be to receive reports relating to the Garda Síochána from the Minister and Department officials, and from the Commissioner and the Garda top brass. They would regularly report to that body. It could also get evidence on the running of other police forces to encourage the development of best practice. It could hear experts from both here and abroad."
He said he had not totally ruled out the idea of a Police authority, which has been set up in Northern Ireland, but stressed that the Northern situation was unusual, given the history of policing there.
"The basic issue is that there is a need for a body outside the Department and the Minister that the Garda Síochána should report to, and answer questions from. They should get its views and recommendations, and it would regularly monitor Garda performance in a constructive way. It would not be having confrontational stand-offs with the Commissioner. The Oireachtas is more and more sidelined on this."
Such a body should generally meet in public, he said, unless it was dealing with issues, like intelligence matters, that it would not be in the public interest to have discussed publicly.
Asked to comment on these suggestions, Mr McDowell said they had not been directly put to him by Mr O'Keeffe, and he was not prepared to discuss them until they had been.
Dr Manning said his views did not contradict those of Mr O'Keeffe. "There is a Government mind-set against giving any real power to an Oireachtas committee," he said. "No Oireachtas committee so far has been able to deal with the Garda Síochána. Mr McDowell keeps saying that parliament should be the body to which the force is accountable. He should come up with something that has real credibility."