The Minister for Justice will bring his report on Garda reform to the Government in the next fortnight. He spoke to Jim Cusack, Security Editor, about his plans for the force
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, will present the Government within the next fortnight with a Garda reform package covering new management structures and his proposals for the introduction of a new complaints inspectorate for the force.
Mr McDowell has also directed that the collation of Garda crime figures, which have been the subject of controversy in recent years, be placed on a "more scientific" basis.
He is examining the possibility of setting up an "out-of-house" agency to compile figures and conduct analysis. He will alsoestablish a Garda traffic corps as part of an overall effort to reduce road deaths and improve traffic flow.
The Minister's report on Garda reform, which is due to be put before Government in two weeks, is also expected to include his recommendation that the Garda Commissioner become the "accounting officer" responsible for managing all Garda budgets.
Until now the Garda budget has been managed largely by the Department of Justice.
It is Mr McDowell's intention that the programme for reform will take place before the completion of tribunals of inquiry into allegations of Garda corruption in Donegal and into the handling of the Abbeylara incident in which a mentally unstable man, Mr John Carthy, was shot dead in Co Longford in April 2000.
He said: "Obviously there is going to be increased public focus on the gardaí, and I am very anxious not to have to await the outcome of these tribunals to get, on a proactive basis, these reforms in place."
His Department has been drawing up legislation for the introduction of an independent Garda inspectorate that will have powers to investigate complaints and to instigate its own investigations, even in the absence of complaints.
Mr McDowell said it was his intention to bring the legislation relevant to the complaints-handling inspectorate and new management structures in a Garda Síochána Bill. Implementation beyond this will depend on Government.
"We intend to do it all in one reforming measure rather than deal with the inspectorate issue and then go back to management issues. Certainly, it will all come up in the very near future before Government."
The management reforms will include the setting of performance targets which the force will be required to meet.
The Minister also said that he did not intend to follow the example of the British government and reclassify cannabis as a Class C drug, making possession a minor offence.
"I am not going down the road that David Blunkett is following.
"I see a seamless garment in which so-called soft drugs like marijuana and 'E' go the whole way to hard drugs like crack cocaine and heroin. There is no prospect of softening our policy in Ireland in relation to these areas."
Although the role of defining whether or not a drug such as cannabis should be further reclassified was up to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, Mr McDowell said, "he and I are at one on the whole issue of substance abuse."
He said that the Dutch government, after analysis of the effects of its policy of legislation, was "going back towards restriction, whereas the UK administration is obviously taking a different attitude."
The Minister said he also intended to declassify crime figures as soon as he received them. He expected to receive the Garda crime figures for 2001 in the coming weeks.
He also intends to set up an agency "out-of-house" from the Garda and the Department of Justice which will use more "scientific" methods to draw up national crime statistics.
This would involve both the collation of the Garda's "in-house" figures and analysis from surveys of people's experience of crime.
"I'm worried that the 'crime reported' and 'crime detected' figures depend on a whole lot of variables," he said.
Public order offences were "probably reported and detected by reference to the amount of police at the scene". In cases where few gardaí were on duty, it was likely that fewer public order offences were reported.
The State's population was increasing, he noted, with higher numbers of young people now in their late teens and 20s, the age profile associated with many forms of crime.
The Minister acknowledged that pressure to minimise crime figures existed in the past. He said: "If the quantification of crime is left to the people who have an interest in minimising it at a political and operational level, you have pressure to understate the problem."
Mr McDowell said he would be proceeding, during his term of office, with the Programme for Government's stated objective of increasing the size of the Garda from 12,000 to 14,000. Budgetary cuts would not affect this.