The Social Democrats have voiced strong support for today\u2019s call by the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Ombudsman Commission for a radical overhaul of the legislation governing its operations to make the system of garda complaints and oversight fairer, more transparent and more efficient.<\/p>\n
Party co-leader R\u00f3is\u00edn Shortall TD called on the Minister for Justice to move swiftly to introduce legislation to allow GSOC become a fully independent and properly resourced agency with its own dedicated funding stream.<\/p>\n
Deputy Shortall said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changes that GSOC seeks are essential if the public and members of the force are to have confidence that all complaints of Garda misconduct will be treated swiftly, fairly and at the appropriately level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current arrangements, whereby An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na investigates many non-criminal complaints internally, clearly does little to inspire public confidence in the independence of the complaints process.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter ten years in operation, and having handled more than 23,000 public complaints, GSOC is in a very strong position to put forward these radical changes. The Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan must waste no time in introducing the reforms that seek to make sure that complaints are handled with fairness, openness, efficiency and independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecent Garda controversies have taken their toll on both morale within the force and public confidence. We must not have a situation where sensible proposals from the Garda oversight agency are not implemented or resourced.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n
19 January 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Social Democrats have voiced strong support for today\u2019s call by the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Ombudsman Commission for a radical overhaul of the legislation governing its operations to make the system of garda complaints and oversight fairer, more transparent and more efficient. Party co-leader R\u00f3is\u00edn Shortall TD called on the Minister for Justice to move swiftly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7,264],"tags":[122,116,114,272,273,16,17],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news","category-press-release","category-roisin-shortall","tag-charlie-flanagan","tag-fine-gael","tag-garda-siochana","tag-gsoc","tag-minister-for-justice","tag-roisin-shortall","tag-social-democrats"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n