The Labour Party has called for radical reform of the Garda Siochana. In a private member's motion the party's justice spokesman, Mr Brendan Howlin, said that while the garda had served the State well since its foundation, the demands on policing had changed enormously.

'The party has three key proposals, including the establishment of a Garda Authority to set the priorities for fighting crime at national level and to make policing more open and accountable.

Labour also calls for county policing liaison committees to agree a county or city policing plan, to monitor progress and address the concerns of local communities.

The third proposal is for a Garda ombudsman, Mr Howlin said the garda Complaints Board was unsatisfactory and virtually unworkable because of the system it operated in.

He said there was worrying evidence that confidence in the Garda was not as strong as it once was. There was evidence that a considerable amount of crime was going unreported, and "people see for themselves the continuing and unacceptable level of murder, gangland shootings, intimidation, drug dealing, joyriding and public disorder".

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, dismissed Labour's proposals and said the party seemed "at last to have woken up to the fact that we have a police force, that we have crime, and that the forces of the State arrayed against the criminal need to be resourced and developed".

He said the motion before the Dail was "political posturing masquerading as policy-making".