01 February 2024
Nearly 5.5 years following the publication of the final report (2018) of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland (CoFPI), the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) broadly welcomes the passage of the Policing, Security, and Community Safety Act 2024 through the Oireachtas.
The Act is intended to implement the recommendations from CoFPI, particularly those which recommended strengthened oversight bodies. However, ICCL remains concerned that the oversight bodies provided for in the Act do not match the threshold recommended by CoFPI. There are significant concerns regarding the scope of access to and transparency of information by the Independent Examiner of Security Legislation, the scope of inspection power of the new Authority, and the scope of jurisdiction for the new Office of the Police Ombudsman.
Robust, strong and independent oversight bodies are essential to human rights-based policing in a democratic society and are necessary to combat corruption and misconduct. When exercising their police powers (such as search and seizure, arrest, or detention), Gardaí restrict our rights to liberty, privacy and bodily integrity. Ireland has a history of weak governance and oversight of An Garda Síochána, resulting in a litany of scandals that have damaged public trust in policing.
As ICCL has consistently raised, the Act fails to remove the prosecutorial powers of Gardaí, which was a key recommendation of CoFPI and is contrary to international best practice. It is also regrettable that there is a lack of specificity on the collection of disaggregated equality data in the Act. The collection of data on how different communities are being policed would inform evidence-based responses to policing.
In summary, while the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024 is an important step forward in advancing human rights-based police reform in Ireland, significant gaps remain. ICCL will continue to call on the Government to further strengthen Garda oversight bodies and advocate for human rights-based policing in Ireland.