The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, intends to "outsource" a number of activities currently carried on by the Garda Síochána in order to concentrate Garda resources on fighting crime.
The move could place the future of small or rural Garda stations in question.
The kind of functions that would be taken away from day-to-day Garda activity include processing fines, delivering summonses, dealing with firearms certificates, signing passport applications and processing the points system, the Minister told The Irish Times.
He said the new proposals would be in the forthcoming Garda Bill.
Mr McDowell said the first task was to ensure that the Garda was adequately resourced, and he had done this in the recent Estimates. But it was necessary to ensure that those resources were properly deployed, he stressed, hinting that maintaining some stations may be reviewed.
"Every static position takes 5.2 members of the Garda, whether in a box outside a house or in a Garda station," he said. "There has to be a decision on whether administering a Garda station is a good use of Garda time or not."
He added that it was not up to him to allocate resources. "I am not the chief of police. Noel Conroy is ... I am not going to pretend to the public that I allocate resources."
Garda numbers have never been so high, he said, but specialisation had drawn a lot of gardaí into specialised units and off the beat. This did not mean that police work was not being carried out, by units such as the CAB, the drug squad, the money laundering unit and the national immigration unit.
Mr McDowell is also discussing with the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, a non-court way of dealing with drink-driving offences, so that points would automatically be deducted from a drink-driver's licence unless he chose to contest it in court.
He is also investigating ways to allow the private sector process the use of speed cameras, under Garda supervision, he told The Irish Times.
"About 20 per cent of Garda overtime is spent in court. I want to get the gardaí out of court," he said.
However, he ruled out setting up an Organised Crime Unit. "Where does drugs stop and organised crime begin?"
The Minister said he would have a number of preliminary proposals for dealing with serious crime to put to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, which is to discuss the matter this month. He said he would look at laws in other countries making it an offence to be involved in an organised criminal gang, but ruled out allowing evidence on this to be based on the opinion of a Garda superintendent.
A lot of the proposals coming from Opposition parties and commentators are already law, he said. "Since the Omagh legislation, intimidating jurors or witnesses is a very serious offence ... But I do not want to compromise the criminal justice system or stretch it to breaking point to deal with short-term outcomes in Limerick. I am more concerned with the post-Gilligan 'squireens' who live in a world where violence is glorified."
The Minister said that many wrong signals had been given in Limerick, including that those sentenced for murder could be released after serving six or seven years.