Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has an “open mind” about whether or not the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) should be independent of his department.
He was responding to a robust intervention by the chairwoman of Gsoc, Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring, who said the oversight body should no longer be under the remit of the department in order to give the public confidence in the independence of its work.
Gsoc accepts protected disclosures from members of the force, or people working alongside An Garda Síochána, who wish to make complaints or allegations.
Ms Justice Ring told The Irish Times: "I don't see why we shouldn't be independent of the department which also has responsibility for the organisation, the Garda, which we oversee.
“It would give public confidence in the work that we do in that we are not particularly attached to any Minister one way or the other.
“It would also give confidence to the gardaí we are dealing with, that we are working to their benefit as well as to the benefit of the public, not anyone else.”
Ms Justice Ring said she had “no difficulty” with the body being answerable to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Equality.
She said the commission had presented such a case to Mr Flanagan.
Repercussions of independence
“We had to do the work for this on our own and we have had to look at the repercussions of independence both in terms of the increase in work that would bring and the increase in resources that would be needed to deal with it,” she said.
“There’s no point in giving us extra powers unless you give us a resource package to deal with those powers and that’s what we have sought to do.”
A Department of Justice spokesman said Mr Flanagan had an “open mind” on the suggested move.
However, he said Mr Flanagan would await the outcome of an ongoing review of his department’s operations by consultants Mazars. Until then, it would be premature to comment on the proposal.
Separately, Ms Justice Ring also criticised the resourcing of Gsoc by central government. She said it had “failed” people who had come forward with protected disclosures because “logistically we haven’t got the staff”.
She responded to details uncovered in confidential reports from Gsoc, obtained by RTÉ's This Week programme through the Freedom of Information Act.
One of the reports said Gsoc wrote to the Department of Justice in November 2016, requesting 12 extra staff for a Protected Disclosures Unit. They were seeking eight investigators, a senior investigating officer and a head of unit at principal officer grade.
While the Department of Justice has sanctioned five staff (four investigators and one clerical staff), Ms Justice Ring said the process is “still ongoing” and “no one of those four investigators has put their foot through our door yet”.
