Police Reform conference: Panels 2 and 3 (after lunch)

Many recommendations for improving police oversight have only been partially implemented. Concerns include the accountability and transparency of comments made by police officers, as well as the jurisdiction and independence of oversight bodies. The scope of the Office of the Police Ombudsman is limited, potentially excluding certain instances of police misconduct. The Policing, Security, and Community Safety Act also limits the independence of the ombudsman and hinders access to information. The role of the independent examiner of security legislation is also restricted, leading to concerns about effective oversight. Other recommendations, such as expanding access to information and removing police prosecutorial powers, have not been implemented. The report concludes with 26 recommendations in total. As you can see, a key finding was that many recommendations that have only been partially implemented largely deal with the accountability and transparency of a hard-to-hear comment. There are also significant concerns regarding the jurisdiction and scope and independence of the new oversight bodies, particularly for the Office of the Police Ombudsman and the Independent Examiner of Security Legislation. This is deeply regrettable, as effective, independent policing oversight is fundamental in a democratic society to guarantee human rights-compliant policing. Given the time constraints today, I'll just highlight my key concerns with the changes to the oversight bodies, focusing on the Office of the Police Ombudsman and the Independent Examiner of Security Legislation, as the report found less implementation concerns regarding governance and oversight through the new policing and community safety authorities. The functions of the new authorities provided for under Section 122 of the Act largely include the specifications provided for by FOCI. Part 5 of the Act governs the new Office of the Police Ombudsman and provides power to the Police Ombudsman to investigate complaints of guard personnel, which includes both guard members and guard staff, who have either 1. committed a criminal offence, or 2. who have behaved in a way that constitutes notifiable misconduct. Regrettably, the definition of notifiable misconduct is quite limited. Based on this, ICCL, along with JSOC in its original submission on the bill, believe that the new Act weakens the scope of jurisdiction. In other words, we believe that this means that less examples of police misconduct would be included as a basis for a complaint. This could include things like the discharge or loss of a guard firearm, or use of a less than lethal weapon such as pepper spray. Examples such as these should be included within the new Office of Revenge as these incidents can damage the community's trust in policing, and as was discussed in both panels this morning, trust in policing is essential, as Anuradha Shriyakana frequently expresses that they operate on the basis of community consent, and Section 4 of the Policing, Security, and Community Safety Act reflects the importance of community confidence in police as a policing principle. In terms of independence, we believe that the Policing, Security, and Community Safety Act limits the independence of the new ombudsman, as the Act obliges the police ombudsman to submit a governance framework to the Minister for Justice. Additionally, the Minister for Justice, rather than the ombudsman themselves, should lay the strategy statement in the annual reports of the office before the eruptive. These limitations on independence are not seen with other ombudsman bodies in Ireland, such as the Children's Ombudsman or the Ombudsman for Defense Forces. The Act also provides that the Guard Commissioner must approve the police ombudsman to search a guard station, which should have a negative impact on his ability to collect evidence in a timely manner and to conduct independent, efficient investigations. The Act also fails to include a legislative obligation on Anuradha Shriyakana to comply with the ombudsman. These issues regarding independence are seriously concerning, given the relatively new history of oversight from Anuradha Shriyakana, which we described in detail this morning. The provisions which impede on the ombudsman's independence are also inconsistent with international best practice in the area, namely the Venice Principles, which provide that the ombudsman shall not be given nor follow any instructions from any authority. There are also numerous provisions throughout the Act which limit the police ombudsman from accessing information on the basis that the Guard Commissioner deems relate to the security of the state. This is particularly concerning given the lack of legal framework regarding other aspects of Anuradha Shriyakana's responsibility for state security, such as the lack of legislation regulating the use of covert human intelligence sources. Any information that is denied on the basis of national security should be the least intrusive means of achieving a legitimate aim and ensure that there is an appropriate balance between the public interest and protecting individuals' human rights. Importantly, it should not be used in a manner to impede the efficacy of the police ombudsman. Put simply, the same human rights standards which apply to issues of national security or nationally secured policing are the same standards which will apply to other areas of policing, such as community policing or road policing, and they all must respect the basic human rights principles of proportionality, legality, and necessity, including in the operation of the police oversight body. This will also inform our analysis of the Policing and Security and Community Safety Act provisions which provide for an independent examiner. Earlier today, both Alison Kilpatrick and Helen Hall raised the issues with the independent examiner, and I'll now dive into this a bit further. The Part 7 of the Act establishes an independent examiner of security legislation in response to the recommendation from the Commission that Ireland establish an independent examiner of terrorism and serious crime legislation, based on the role in the United Kingdom. Ultimately, the independent examiner, as provided for in the Act, is not opposed to the role in the UK. This is of significant concern as one of the reasons why the Commission decided to retain the unique dual responsibility that I've already hit upon for both policing and security services was on the basis of effective oversight. Furthermore, both the Policing Authority and GSAW have raised concerns regarding national security being used to deny oversight bodies access to information. One of the significant issues with the current independent examiner is that the Act does not provide the independent examiner with the information it needs to do its job. Access to information can be denied on the vague and imprecise grounds of international relations and to safeguard international intelligence sources. This restrictive approach to access to information is not found in equivalent positions in other jurisdictions, such as in Northern Ireland, the UK, or Australia. The Act also hinders the independent examiner's ability to disseminate relevant information to the public. Combating these issues is the fact that the eligibility for the role is also incredibly narrow, as eligibility is confined to those who have been a judge at the High Court, Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court. This is not seen in other jurisdictions, and we've seen senior academics and senior counsel take up equivalent positions in Northern Ireland, the UK, and Australia. Due to these restrictions, the role as a current examiner has been described as toothless, and we believe rightfully so. Other recommendations in the Convention on the Future of Policing that were not addressed in the Policing, Security, and Community Safety Acts that have only been partially implemented include a review of emergency economic status under the Freedom of Information Act 2014. As it currently stands, the law only provides access relating to human resources, finance, and procurement. Expanding the scope of access to records would play a significant role in advancing the transparency of environment-shared commerce. A Freedom of Information request submitted by ICCL to both the Department of Justice and the Department of Actuation revealed that there were no records relating to such a review, and thus the recommendations relating to environment-shared commerce status under the Freedom of Information Act have not been implemented. The lack of removal of guardian-prostitutory powers is also a significant recommendation that has not been implemented. The practice of police prosecuting cases in court is contrary to international best practice, including standards from the Council of Europe, and there is no comparable practice to having police services prosecute cases in the UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Separating the roles of each agency in the criminal justice system is essential for fairness and consistency in the court. This means that the criminal investigation and prosecution roles must be kept separate, and that independent and properly trained prosecutors are vital to ensure that police investigations comply with human rights law and best practice. We heard in the first panel that the government has decided to retain these prostitutory powers. However, it just would slightly increase internal oversight. ICCL is of the view that internal oversight is not sufficient, particularly in the broader context of the previous data reform initiatives predating COSPI, which arose from issues like internal corruption and mismanagement. Thus, this recommendation to remove the Guard of Prosecutorial Powers is not implemented. There has unfortunately also been little progress in the recommendation to codify the police powers of arrest, search, and detention. The general scheme of the Guard of Chicago Powers Bill 2021 was introduced in June 2021 to fulfill this recommendation, but there has been no further legislative progress. It has been identified as a priority for the Department of Justice for publication in the summer legislative program. Thus, with the publication of the general scheme, this recommendation is only partially implemented, and ICCL eagerly awaits the introduction of the bill. The report concludes with 26 different recommendations. 10 for Angarshi Akana, 9 for the government, 2 for the eroticists, and 4 for the oversight bodies. Given the time restraints today, I am unable to discuss all of the recommendations in detail, but I wanted to highlight a quick summary and key themes in these recommendations. For Angarshi Akana, the recommendations relate to continuing human rights training, increasing diversity, furthering culture change, building relationships with affected communities, and more meaningful engagement with civil society. For government, the recommendations ask for amendments to the Police and Security and Community Safety Act to address our concerns regarding these oversight bodies, to implement the outstanding recommendations from the Commission, and to mandate the collection of desegregated data across the criminal justice system. For the eroticists, we call for a more regular program of engagement between Angarshi Akana and the Joint Eroticist Committee on Justice and Equality, as recommended by FOCI. For the oversight bodies, we call for human rights training of staff, and also to increase their diversity of staff. While I do not have time to discuss the recommendations in more detail, the recommendations reflect the report's overall findings that while there has been progress made on recommendations that have less of a direct impact on human rights, such as the GARDA operating model, the recommendations directly concerning the oversight bodies and the transparency and accountability of GARDI have not been fully implemented. This is incredibly concerning given the history of little to no accountability or transparency of GARDI, and the particular circumstances, meaning the cycle of successive crisis-based reforms, which gave rise to COSPI. That's all I have time for today, and if anyone has any further questions about the content of the report, have them in chat, in the Q&A, or even after. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with everybody today. It comes as no surprise to anybody that I'm here to talk about safeguarding human rights in policing. Things that I will cover will be around racial equality, given my particular role, but the things I say should apply more broadly to other characteristics as well. This year, I've been a police officer for 25 years, having joined policing in 1999, which was a year of real change for policing in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. In Northern Ireland, we were digesting the report from Lower Catalan policing in the province. Whilst in England and Wales, policing was labelled as institutionally racist. Following the report into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, authored by Lord Macpherson. Both reports led to huge change, not just for policing, but for wider society, and their impact until we feel today. In today's world, some might call these similar reports and their recommendations old policing, but having lived through the recommendation and experienced the improvements they led to, I believe that policing were effective at solving crime and preventing harm in communities, due to an increased trust and confidence in policing. The foundation of policing in the UK and Ireland is that we police by consent. We could not effectively hold crime scenes or police large scale public order events without the cooperation and consent of the public. In Ireland North and South, around 20,000 police officers could not hold back a combined population of around 7 million people without them following directions and working with us. When I started my career in 1999, we were entering a new dawn for policing in Northern Ireland after 30 years of violence, which took many thousands of lives and injured many, many more. Police officers were included in that list of deaths and we lost over 300 officers, both on and off duty, during the troubles. That included my best friend's dad who was shot through a kitchen window when he was 11, and another friend's uncle who was blown up on the side of the road going to a call. Since 1999, we have lost 2 officers, which is of course too, too many, but shows how far the pattern of reforms have brought policing in Northern Ireland. In policing, I have the unusual position of being both in the minority and the majority. From a minority point of view, I was one of around 5 to 10 officers from an ethnic minority background in a police service of around 13,500. From a majority viewpoint though, I was one of the 92% from a positive background that made up for the enroyment of certain staggering people. That gave me a unique insight into how we need to challenge our own viewpoints and perspectives and not layer them upon others and expect them to see the world as we do. Within two years of my career, the name badge and uniform of the police service changed and we implemented positive discrimination to help increase the representation of Catholic officers in the police service. This ran for 10 years and the representation of Catholic officers moved from 8% to 32% in that period. Ensuring our police service better represented the communities we served made it easier to believe that we were policing everyone fairly and more fairly. It also ensured that the false beliefs and behaviours from the Catholic community were better understood and shared throughout the service. The best diversity lesson I ever received was spending 8 to 10 hours in a police car, sharing the daily stresses of being a police officer, as well as hearing the different lived experiences and perspectives of someone from a different background. Diversity and inclusion can often be seen as an internal HR fluffy thing to do. I have overseen firsthand how diversity and inclusion can increase trust and confidence in organisations and make us better at what we deliver externally. When I first joined the police service we were backed up by 7,000 military personnel and had to be thrown by helicopter in some areas due to the threat of being blown up a few feet over there. In 2024 we now face a larger community with half the numbers we did back then and we are no longer backed up by military personnel. We now drive into most areas although there is still a threat of being attacked in some areas showing that we still have a lot more to do. We also have a workforce and senior leadership team that is forced to better understand the communities we serve and it factors those different perspectives into our policy and decision making processes with community scrutiny and oversight being established through the creation of the Northern Ireland Policing Board and Police Ombudsman. Diversifying the police service of Northern Ireland is the right thing to do and the benefits are still being dealt by law. However, the policing reform brought in by the Food Fairly Agreement was centred on our Protestant Unionist Lloyds communities and our Catholic Nationalist Republican communities. We must look at updating and regressing our current structures to cater for the increasingly diverse societies that we now police. At the same time we were bringing in wholesale changes to policing in Northern Ireland, policing in England and Wales, supplementing the past recommendations from the report into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. The report examined how the Metropolitan Police Service handled the murder inquiry after allegations of racism had driven some of their actions in the aftermath of Stephen's murder. The 350 page report concluded that the investigation into the killing had been marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership. Laura MacPherson went further than previous reports by developing a definition of institutional racism which was as follows. The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantages minority ethnic people. Can we say that that definition does not apply to policing in the North or South? The report's 70 recommendations included changes to the operational procedures such as training of family liaison officers dedicated to all families of murder victims as well as changes to legislation including the updating of the double jeopardy law to enable the prosecution after acquittal where there is fresh and viable evidence available. The vast majority were related to issues impacting race and ethnicity and placed a requirement on the government to establish performance indicators to monitor the family of racist incidents, level of satisfaction within the police service from ethnic minority communities, racial awareness training, stop and search procedures, recruitment of ethnic minority officers and staff and complaints about racist forces. It also created a new Police Complaints Organisation, the IPCC and defined the perception test for gay crimes. Not all of the recommendations have been implemented and in the last few years we have seen policing carry online some of the changes that were brought in. However, we have a clearer understanding of the representation of the police service and the procedural fairness of how we use our colours as we record the ethnicity of our workforce, those stopped in search, those who have had force used against them and those who face misconduct inside policing. Whilst data can sometimes be seen as a spectre to be pleased with, I believe it is the first step in our journey to becoming a service that is trusted by all and is seen as a protector for all. Data backs up the lived experiences of minority communities and creates an evidence base of where discrimination and disproportionate use of power occurs. It allows policing to follow the principles outlined by the MP, the Right Honourable David Lammy, who challenged policing in England and Wales to explain their disproportionality and if they cannot explain it, then they must reform. Due to the efforts created by policing in the years following the Macpherson Report, policing in England and Wales moved from 2% of officers being from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to 8.5% in 2024. A value of 0.5 refers to a population of 18%, which isn't that far off Ireland's minority ethnic population, but shows how far policing in England and Wales still has to go. I'm Maurice McCallum, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, however should not wait for an event like Stephen Lawrence's murder to force change. It must learn from the Macpherson Report and listen to the needs of ethnic minority communities now. Having a representative workforce enriches the police service and allows policing to understand and respond to how crime occurs in different communities. The death a few years ago of 39 Vietnamese nationals came as a big surprise to the police service in Northern Ireland as the people smuggling around were operating around a quiet village in County Armagh. Whilst we were surprised about this, I have no doubt the community were not so shocked and knew exactly what was happening. How do we protect the community when we don't know what they need or how we can help? Policing in Northern Ireland highlights how a vacuum created by a lack of trust in policing are filled by organisations like Armagh Root. They operate under the guise of protection whilst exploiting and coercing the community. In London organised crime gangs operate in a similar way and given the increasing diversity in Ireland, police must respond and learn from their lessons from policing in the north and in England and Wales. Despite the progress made we still have issues around trust and confidence with some communities suffering from the legacy of past and intergenerational trauma. Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in England did not stop trusting the police overnight. It happened due to a number of incidents when policing refused to treat them as victims and merely seen them as suspects and offenders. Early examples were the race riots of 1919 when black Irish and Chinese workers were attacked in port cities such as Cardiff, Liverpool and Glasgow where the most extreme of the violence came the lynching of a young Afro-Caribbean man. Despite this violence police intervened and arrested the black victims. In 1958 the Daly Boys attacked black communities in Notting Hill. Their response was again a failure for the police to see the black communities as victims. This resulted in the black community coming together to put on the Notting Hill Carnival which is still in existence today and still causes friction between police service and the community in that area. In 1981 there were riots in Brixton after increased use of such laws which gave the power to arrest anyone in an area who policing thought might commit a crime. It was primarily used against the black community and its overuse lessened. It led to the Solomon Report and brought in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to govern use of stop and search and wider police powers. Since then there has obviously been the Macpherson Report and more recently Barnett's case which again found police to be institutionally racist. Ireland has a unique opportunity to learn from these experiences and ensure that the legacy of mistrust in the black community does not grow to the same heights that I see in black communities in London. Ethnic minority communities have opened doors to the police but that door is slowly closing. I implore all those in positions of foreign authority to do all they can to ensure that we build stronger, safer and more cohesive communities. My experience of racism is that people initially see the differences in me but over time as I spend more time in my company they get to see the similarities and there is a tipping point. The more we can do to create spaces for communities to come together, to learn, develop and thrive the better it will be for all of us. Having a diverse police service is not some woke policing idea. It's an operational necessity and ensures that we are seen as a protector rather than a repressor. The lifeblood of policing is intelligent from the community. Whilst there is some great police work done every day, it is victims and witnesses cooperating with us and being brave enough to stand the court that helps us hold those committing crimes they have found. The National Black Police Association is the voice of racial conscience from within policing. We are an artificial wave ensuring that diverse thoughts and views are part of police decision making processes in England and Wales. The value of information from a different perspective creates better policy development and better decision making which does not intentionally or inadvertently discriminate against any particular community. Our long term objective is not to be obsessed in the first place but to have police services that represent the communities we serve and that delivers the services they also in a fair and equitable manner. Officers that look like me, stand in uniform and create a connection with minority communities and make them feel that a police service might actually be there for them and that some might see policing as a viable career. In the police service of Northern Ireland only 0.6% of our workforce are from ethnic minority backgrounds. That's 41 officers and 23 staff in a workforce of almost 9,000. Our ethnic minority population currently sits around 3.4% which makes us the least represented police service in the UK at 7 times underrepresented. Can you imagine what it's even that 3.4% would actually mean for policing in Northern Ireland? An additional 200 officers visibly working in communities, acting as a visible sign that there are people inside policing that look like them. We are cascading in knowledge, different lived experiences and perspectives from the communities they come from. Enriching the cultural competence of our colleagues on policing's ability to better predict crime trends, engage with diverse victims and witnesses and solve crimes that we haven't previously considered. I am pushing for that within policing in Northern Ireland but who is pushing for that within Angora's economy? The need appears to be greater in the south. Communities are more diverse. Yet I know that a Sikh guy would have to wait almost 10 years to join Angora's economy to hear resistance to the policy of headwear to align with the world's traditional headdress. We also try to set up a staff network of resistance by the existing statutory bodies and none have been created so far. These are conversations that were taking place in England and Wales in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The Met EPA, our first local association, formed 30 years ago this year. Policy and practice and process must capture the best trends from the past but adapt to the changing demographics and meanings of the communities we face. Thorough recruitment with additional support to some communities who lack contact within policing will be needed but these conversations may be difficult for some. They will prevent further erosions in trust and confidence in the future. To bring about a representative Angora's economy we would have a lot more officers working across Ireland than the 200 that we meet in the police force of Northern Ireland with that visibility enriching policing being so much more profound as well. I hope that today offers enough opportunity for us to reflect and do all that we can to avoid another family suffering like the Lawrence's had to and ensure that we use the tools at our disposal to keep the ethos of policing by consent alive. We should not wait for rags in the streets or no-go areas for policing to develop and should not allow professional incompetence, institutional racism or failure in leadership to define policing's relationship with ethnic minority communities. We have an opportunity to choose a different path and we must not let it pass us by. Thank you. Good afternoon. Firstly I would like to congratulate Emily and get on their report. It is very useful to have an independent audit of implementation. Before getting stuck into oversight specifically I have been asked to talk about oversight with a focus on oversight and security. I want to make a few general observations about the implementation of recommendations made in 2018. It is really important to remember by the Commission on the Future of Policing. Firstly, so much time has elapsed since the report of the Commission was published, almost 60 years, that the context in which it was established has been largely forgotten. Secondly, the COVID pandemic caused progress on implementation but also afforded an opportunity to showcase what good community policing and at least policing by consent might look like. As Liz Campbell has touched on this, this opportunity could not have been optimized after the pandemic and the role of maintaining the COVID roster, although important, distracted from what should have been a serious discussion about community policing and the interests of actual communities. Resort to law and order tropes as the lingua franca of political discourse on criminal justice and policing, whether it is the war on drugs, or the war on terror, or the war on woke, or endless debates about mandatory sentencing, indicates a lack of imagination in the policy domain and ideologically a race to the bottom. This is happening in a context where the main opposition party in Ireland has decided to to enhance its electoral prospect, most pointedly in relation to immigration, thus ensuring a further impoverishment of debate on policy options, including those of core importance to policing. This is also occurring in a context in which the far right, in various guises, is on the right, is on the rise, and the threat from the far right has been underestimated by Anwar whose response to some instances of far right activism has been frankly perplexing and inadequate. No one in the Dáil has championed radical or original ideas about policing. The debate on the policing, security and community safety bills was characterised by a clogging and unprobing engagement by deputies and senators with no real analysis of the degree to which proposals from government matched or did not match what was recommended by the Commission on the Future of Policing. To be blunt, there is no real debate in Ireland about policing. The decision taken by the Commission, based upon the experience of the Patent Commission, to write a report of no more than 100 pages, with high-level, overlooking recommendations lacking elaborate specificity, was perhaps, or perhaps took too much on trust when it came to the implementation phase. With the passage of time, it was easier for government and other stakeholders to undermine some core informing principles of the report, and had our recommendations been more detailed, it might have been easier to hold the government to account on implementation, and return to it in the context of the ephemera of security legislation. The deterioration in relations between the GRA in particular, and the Garda Commissioner post-COVID, constitute the threat to the reform agenda, but so too does cherry-picking from the Commission on the Future of Policing recommendations by Garda management, facilitated by the Department of Justice. As with patent in Northern Ireland, there is clearly a need for on-going review of policing, as opposed to review in the context of a crisis. It falls to the new structure, the Board of Garda Síochána, the Policing and Community Safety Authority, to ensure that this occurs with tailored inputs in the forms of lessons learned from the new Policing Ombudsman system. The political system also plays an indispensable role in the on-going review of policing. This must be evidence-led and not slogan-driven. It must be open to expertise and comparative analysis, not just the expertise of embedded analysts, but also the independent expertise of critical threads. Political leaders rehearsing tired chivalry about law and order, laced with empty rhetoric of toughness, underscored by blind loyalty to a Garda Síochána, amounts to no more than pure-eyed chafe-drawing. Although superficially comforting, it does not in any meaningful way strengthen a Garda Síochána or improve our policing service. The political system has told all actors in the domain of policing and community safety, including oversight bodies, to account. This is an essential aspect of public accountability in any democratic society, and again I will return to that. And so to oversight specifically calls for the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act of 2024. The structures that existed prior to the establishment of the Commission in 2017 were established in a reactive manner and operated in a piecemeal fashion. GSOC and the Inspectorate came about as a result of the Morris Tribunal and the Policing Authority for their reaction to the seemingly intractable problems of governance dysfunction and corruption. There were so many design flaws in GSOC from its inception that it was difficult for it to function with any great effectiveness. The Inspectorate and Authority did some remarkably good work in difficult circumstances. In our interactions as a Commission with these bodies, the one that made the most ambitious case for change was actually GSOC. And in fact its then Chairperson, the Justice Ring, saw the establishment of the Commission on the Future of Policing in 2017 as a likely cause of further delay in the necessary reform of that body. This comment was both prescient and fair. With the intention of streamlining governance and oversight of policing, the Commission asked without controversy to propose the effective merger of the Inspectorate and Policing Authority. In relation to GSOC, we proposed the creation of a new entity, the Independent Office of Police Ombudsman, now known as CITU, to mirror as much as possible the Office of Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Additionally, we proposed by a majority of nine to two the creation of a new entity, the Board of Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. The proposal to establish a board was strongly connected to the idea of adjusting the role of the Guarding Commissioner so that she or he was more akin to a CEO. It was intended to address the unavoidably complicated nature of the relationship between Guarding Management and the Department of Justice and its corporation sole, the Minister for Justice. All of these factors speak to the connection between structure and culture. The considered view of the Commission was that externalising internal governance to the degree to which this had occurred under the original policing authority legislation made it more difficult to engage Guarding Management with direct and unavoidable responsibility for internal governance and for the consequences of governance dysfunction and negative organisational culture. The majority of the Commission was also persuaded of the need for some element of professional support at board level, bearing in mind the skills gaps that might foresee the effect in Guarding Management from mainly from those experienced exclusively in policing. The confident view of two members that externalised governance should be maintained was based on a sound and discerning appreciation of recent policing history and a genuine desire to get at the causes of corruption and dysfunction. Our disagreement was a respectful one and it remains to be seen how the board of a Guard of Sheetala will function once established. As somebody else pointed out this morning, personality would be hugely, hugely important in this regard. As the person who chairs the Governance Oversight and Accountability sub-committee of the Commission, I remain a strong supporter of the proposal to merge the policing authority and Guarding Inspectorate by establishing a new entity, the PCSA. The PCSA, as I see it, this new body is having the potential to maintain the rigorous element of arm's length public accountability of Guarding Management, established so impressively by the policing authority under its three chairs. As the new body will now also incorporate the Inspectorate function, it will present an invaluable body of organisational intelligence that should enable a powerful link between the ideals driving accountability and the practicalities of reforms. The legislative arrangements for the new authority and related entities take community policing and community safety seriously and it is imperative that the priority attached to both the commission and the future of policing is reflected profoundly in the culture and modes of operandi of this new authority. In relation to the independent examiner, I have written and spoken extensively elsewhere about how much was lost in translation in making legislative arrangements for the new authority. The Commission in deciding unanimously that the dual role of the Guarding Sheet on the respect of policing and security should be maintained, recommended the creation of an independent oversight mechanism for national security based on the independent review of terroristic legislation model that operates in the UK and Northern Ireland. This was a difficult debate within the Commission and arguably more fundamental than any debate on Guarding Governance. The Commission also recommended the establishment of a fusion-type centre to augment the role of a Guarding Sheet condominium in relation to national security and on foot of this recommendation the National Security Analysis Centre or NSFAC was established on a non-statutory basis in the Department of Opposition. The problem with the new office of the independent examiner is that it falls significantly short of what was recommended by the Commission and is not the equivalent of the independent reviewer in the UK and Northern Ireland. This applies to the restrictions on eligibility for appointments, but more importantly to provisions relating to the withholding or rejection of information sought by the examiner as well as other provisions that undermine the independence of the office. There is also a degree of incoherence in the design of an office that is required to support government and promote public confidence in national security while also subjecting government and examinations to independent review. The unavoidable fact of the Irish legislation falling far short of the UK model on which it was supposedly based gave rise to little or no controversy in parliamentary debate on the relevant legislative provisions. If this is an indication of the level of interest in legislation providing for oversight of national security in the Houses of the Oireachtas, one shudders to think what level of interest would be shown in reports laid before the Houses by the independent examiner pursuant to that legislation in the future. Such incuriosity on the part of parliamentarians is quite frankly mysterious and can only be understood by luxuriating in a comforting and expansive sense of Irish exceptionalism. There is nothing exceptional about Irish exceptionalism, even if we do it better than everyone else. I speculated earlier as to whether it might have been wiser for the Commission on the Future of Beliefs to make more detailed recommendations, if only to establish a firmer basis on which to hold government to account on implementation. But in the time that we had, and in order to maintain and maximise consensus, the model of high-level recommendation has caused me a detraction. There was also a pragmatic degree of deference involved, or a sense that others were better equipped to work out the details while remaining faithful to the animating principles underpinning the recommendation. By recommending an independent oversight mechanism for national security modelled on the successful one that exists in the UK and Northern Ireland, the Commission did not feel that it needed to spell out that there should be a broader pool of persons eligible for appointment, or that the officeholder should be entitled to see everything with the assurance that she or he would be adequately vetted and subject to strict obligations of confidentiality. It was taken on trust that in recommending an office based on the UK model, that such fundamental and indispensable indicia of independence would be included in anti-Irish legislation to establish an equivalent office, to borrow a phrase, is went without saying. Now that the legislation has been passed and an appointment to the Office of Independence and Valour is awaited, one can only conclude somewhat sadly that we took too much on trust. I have very little doubt that the Office of Independence and Valour would provide no more than a veneer on independent oversight of national security, with that veneer enhanced by a bespoke judicial varnish. Its establishment marks yet another dissonant lack of equivalent in this part of the island of Ireland when it comes to the basic human rights protections that ought to apply in areas like national security. Those who view the dual role of An Bhair be Siochána in relation to policing and security with concern will have little reason to feel that their concerns have been addressed with any seriousness. Yes, there will be a mechanism for questioning language excuses grounded in national security to evade accountability, but the culture of secrecy and resistance to scrutiny will remain largely intact. If there was an Olympics for light-touch regulation, we would win the gold all the time without even needing performance enhancement drugs. And in conclusion, Chairman, I would like to make one point, and this refers to something I said at the start of the paper, about the context in which the commission of the future of policing was established being largely forgotten. In all walks of life, we encounter a special feeling, and if we are being honest, we have all engaged in it at some stage, usually in trivial circumstances. One of the more insidious examples of special feelings as a colour discourse on policing in recent times is that somehow oversight, or excessive oversight, is an impediment to effective policing. This was articulated in a most valuable and determined way around the time of the Dublin riots. In our deliberations in 2017 to 2018, the commission of the future of policing spoke with hundreds of members of the Garda Síochána of every rank, and took seriously their honestly expressed concerns about all aspects of policing, including oversight and the handling of complaints. In our recommendations, we were acutely aware of their well-founded frustrations about cheap stock, about Garda discipline, and many other matters. But we were no less mindful of the context in which we came into existence, a context in which a Garda Síochána faced an existential crisis resulting from a succession of scandals, some of which continued to reverberate while we deliberated. It would have been madness of a most perverse kind to recommend any weakening of oversight of policing in the context in which the commission was established. Effective policing is quite simply not impeded by effective or robust oversight. Good oversight enhances a policing service, and anyone who suggests otherwise should be reminded of the egregiously damaging scandals, none of which were victimless, all of which occurred at a time of weak oversight, that brought policing in Ireland to its knees. If we choose to revise recent history and minimise its outworkings, we will assuredly end up where we were in 2017. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Do we have questions and comments? I have a series of questions, but I'm happy to take them from the floor first. Yes, please. Do we have a microphone? Oh, sorry, I think it's in the drawer there. Sorry, it's over here. It's in the middle on the right side there. Thank you. My name is Caroline and I'm a researcher with the American Library and Literacy Service. I previously worked in academia and was doing research in the area of EDLs and the function of EDLs within policing, as I'm sure you all know. This is a question, and I thank you to all the speakers for this fabulous presentation, but primarily for Angie. Thank you, I really enjoyed the presentation. I just want to hear your experience. There are a lot of initiatives that are called for in terms of diversity and representation of people from different backgrounds within these services. For example, preaching programs, internships, accessibility, positive affirmative action, for example. It's not even a culture, it's an event, it's a target. Internship programs within these services. So, can you give your experience? What should, or what do you want to prioritize in this regard? What are the activities that we should be doing as an academic, as a human, to increase diversity within our work? Because, you know, it's taken by many individuals. I think it's amazing that we're trying to get that sort of diversity from the source that you found. So, it's just a topic. I'd like some health statistics and things to do with it. If you have any recommendations on that. Is it okay if I just roll a couple of questions together? Yeah. I'm actually a colleague of Caroline's, and it's also a question for yourself, Angie. In a previous role, I worked in the Human Rights and Equality Commission. And it's really, I'm struck by what you said about, again, no traction of any representative body. And also, I was recalling what Helen said earlier, looking at what's on the statute books. And so, she mentioned the NAMI Act of 2005, the Garrison Act, and the reference to human rights. And I'm struck, I'm struck very early in the chance to mention about the public sector human rights and equality duty, and where that fits within our conversations today. You know, it's not, it's been unstructured for 10 years now, and I'm sure you've lost experience with the equivalent of Section 75 duty in Northern Ireland, and this is to do with the water as well, and how it operates. And it's just a piece of the puzzle that often in public sector bodies, it's not to the forefront. And I mentioned, you know, there's more discussion of ED&I strategies and so on. I guess it's an obligation that applies to both staff, as well as the individuals getting services from public bodies. And the models that IREC had piloted, you know, did include staff representative organisations and trying to create that shared understanding of human rights throughout the staff cohort. And I guess, how can we use what we have and implement it, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel of that one? Thanks. Thanks very much, and thanks for the audit document as well. It's incredibly helpful. It reminded me that it took three bits of legislation to get anywhere, and yet the implementation of that, and I know I haven't heard the legislation on that, but absolutely nothing like it, and water connections, et cetera, has been got up here. But the context was, at that stage, that there was considerable political and political leverage created by the fact that there was the ongoing resettlement and disagreements and constant renegotiations for how were we going to implement things that had been previously agreed to be implemented, and that helped us rapidly get a lot of the patent reforms over the line. So my question is, in the context now, what's going to create further leverage to get more of what has been agreed and implemented in the long run, over the line? Thank you. Actually, sir, Randy. Yeah, lovely. Thank you. I think the experiences that I've had definitely were that no system will ever change without it being forced on them. It takes that external pressure, whether that's legislation, whether that's community pushback, protests, that kind of stuff. But for me, the initiatives are really understanding your data initially, so understanding where you are at this present time, mapping that against the communities that you serve, not just at the macro level or the national level, but also at different areas as well. So I think that's a starting point. Understand where you are, what progress needs to be made, and set those targets. The next bit's looking at the attraction side. I keep saying that recruitment is a byproduct of good or bad relationships, and relationships are only built up over time. So there is no point in going to ethnic minority communities whenever you're asking them to join the police service in any kind of jurisdiction, anywhere you are. I keep saying policing, at times, feeds those relatives that come to your house, eat all your food at special occasions, disappear, and you never see them the rest of the year. Think about the people that you reach out to when you're in crisis. It's those that are in your life continuously. So having this long-term community engagement with communities so that whenever it comes to recruitment, all you're doing is asking them to apply because you've already built up the relationship at a local level. Then, as you move through the process, it's looking at positive action initiatives. Obviously, England and Wales have a few more levers that way under the Equality Act. More or less, positive action is helping people with barriers that are there and helping them to navigate it up to the point of assessment. Discrimination then comes in if you do something beyond the assessment period, which is what we had to do in Northern Ireland. So I think it's helping to understand that minority ethnic communities in particular do not have relationships to policing. In the police uplift in England and Wales, the data was collected and 40% of recruits had a relationship with policing already. Second, third generation police officers in the sphere of police officers. As I said, my majority community from a Protestant background in Northern Ireland was my best friend's dad was a superintendent. He helped us through the process. I grew up on stories of what policing was like. So I knew what it was before I went in. Even sitting in policing in Northern Ireland, I remember a Catholic recruit that was with us and she didn't realise you had to wear a uniform. She didn't realise you had to do night shift. And I'm sitting there with all of my majority privileges going, how do you not know that? Everybody knows that. And then you have to take your step back and go, everybody that has a contact with policing like I did knows that. So those advantages definitely help them through the process. So anything you can do in positive action to help with that goes through it. What they also look at is adverse impact ratios as well. So looking at the recruitment process and does it disproportionately impact or disadvantage any particular community? So the English as an additional language is one that was a big one in England and Wales. There's no legislative requirement to change that but they were looking at giving a little bit of extra time and stuff. So looking at some of the different things that can inhibit you coming forward. But I think if I'm honest, Baroness Casey spelled it out, policing reform is all about crisis reform, crisis reform. I am tired at the minute of seeing shiny, glossy brochures and mapping activity versus outcome. So we can go on this journey. We do it with the Police Race Action Plan in England and Wales. They tell me every day that I'm at a meeting that look at what we've done. We've done this, this, this and this. And they look at it from a project but I'm looking at our members, the communities we come from and they're saying nothing's changed. The environment's actually got worse. So set it away from just a strategy. Just make sure that officers are in communities every day working closer with those communities at a different level and don't see the community as one homogenous group. Don't be afraid to break it down. As far as the credit, we are working with them. PSNI on a cross-border initiative with the Rayford Ferdinand Foundation. Two weekends ago we brought six young people from down south, six from Northern Ireland, six from London and six from Manchester. Young ladies that went to Manchester to do a leadership programme together. So again, for me, that's part of it as well. Officers coming in, not doing their own, don't do drugs, don't do this, that and the other, standing in uniform. It's standing in track suits on the side of a pitch, learning to get to know people and what that does is give us a connection with the community. We get to see the best in the community, the community get to see it the officer underneath the uniform and I think it's that connection that will end up leading to better recruitment and better outcome for policing in general. Just to pick up on the staff network one as well quickly. That was a few years ago. Always happy to revisit it. For us, whilst that diversity isn't there, what we are really is that artificial way of getting that diverse voice in the decision making at a strategic level. That's why I get to sit and meet Chief Constables and others at that level because in all the policing, the first black police officer in England and Wales was John Kent who policed in 1837 around Carlisle. Since then we've only ever had one black Chief Constable, which is Michael Fuller who was the Chief Constable of Kent in the early 2000s. None since. So that Chief's Council which brings them all together, there is limited thought, there's very few people in the police group think and they just don't know. Even if you're really genuine, you are prone to making decisions that inadvertently disproportionately impact communities. It's good to see that the Antarctic Arm is a national decision making model. The firearms officer is our bread and butter. But that first part of that decision making model is all about gathering information and intelligence from a variety of sources to make sure that you don't have bias, that you're checking it for fact and what's opinion and making sure. If you spin the rest of that model then you will have better policy, process and decision making as a result of having that information at the start of it. I want to bulk up on the public sector positive duty. One point just to make in relation to that, IREC has done a great work on that but it isn't just the job of IREC to promote the public sector positive duty. There's really important work to be done by other elements of the integrity branch to promote that. It's a weak statutory provision. It doesn't create a cause of action. The one thought I have, and I've mentioned it at another conference, and I don't think it's completely fanciful. I think if you do section 42, there's a really powerful way of gathering evidence to be used in judicial review and possibly section 3 cases under the ECHR Act as evidence that the state is not complying with its human rights obligations. It's easier in the context of equality because there's more solid legal obligations in that area. I do think that's something that's worth saying. Creating that duty in IREC, doing all the good work that it does, has kind of led a lot of other areas of government off the hook. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform should be hugely interested in that duty. It's also the Department of Public Sector Reform. The Ombudsman should be interested in it, and so should other, what you might call, regulatory pioneers or whatever. In Daniel's question about patent and the fact that there was a kind of an ongoing or rolling peace process, that kind of created opportunities for bigger incremental gain related to all of that. Of course, the context of patent was different, and the initial inspection of patent was different. But the Commission on Abuser Abuse, I've got to be really honest, does not have the significance of patent. It doesn't today, but it just doesn't, you know, basically. And it was very modeled on that. It was very influenced. It was Kathy O'Toole who was on rope, and one of the advisors who had worked on rope. But, you know, there's no point in pretending. It's not as big a deal as patent was. What's going to happen? How are we going to fix this? I think there's two contexts. The context of non-crisis review, ongoing review, so bodies like the Police and Community Safety Authority and others will, I imagine, over time, carry out studies and reflect critically, reflect positively in other respects on changes and make the case for reform. Civil society, I think, because I've got to tell you, is now doing an annual event. This is hugely important. It cannot be overstated how important that kind of review is. Helen Hall's comments earlier about the need for us to get comfortable about hard conversations is really, really important. It cannot be, you know, it shouldn't be a problem that somebody takes a depersonalized view about something in relation to policing or whatever, or related matters, and that that then becomes a deal breaker. It should never be like that in any kind of democratic discourse.