On behalf of the Green Party I extend our sympathies to the family of Captain Duffy on their tragic loss and commend him on his heroism in the work that he and the other members of the Coast Guard have done.

It was interesting watching the Garda Commissioner in the Oireachtas committee this morning, and I have a number of questions for the Minister on the Government's position. This mess must be cleaned up. Has the Government considered, or will it consider, legislative changes to deal with those wrongful 14,700 convictions? Rather than have to go to court on an individual case-by-case basis which would clog up our courts and be hugely expensive and difficult for the litigants involved, could we not introduce a legislative amendment where all 14,700 would be scheduled and listed as an amendment to the legislation? This would allow for them to be quashed in a single legislative move, which would then allow us to move on to fix the redress which might arise in any particular cases. Has the Government considered such a legislative provision in its Cabinet meeting this week so that we at least deal with those cases in a timely, quick, cheap and efficient manner?

A key question I have concerns the Government's decision that the way to respond to this is another inquiry into the future of the Garda. What is the purpose of such an inquiry when we have the likes of the Olson report, completed in November 2015, entitled "Changing Irish Policing", which to my reading gives a very clear analysis of the difficulties we have and gives direction on what needs to be done? Why are we commissioning yet more studies into what might be done when we have, it seems to me, a perfectly well written, incisive, articulate and clear report that could very quickly provide us with a range of actionable items? It is particularly shocking that Deputy Commissioner Twomey, in the last meeting of the Policing Authority, said that one of the main recommendations in terms of employing staff in Castlebar on the data communications system had not yet been put in place. It was also shocking to hear the Commissioner say this morning that she had only now got the team she needed in place in terms of additional assistant commissioners. What is it in the public administrative system that is restricting us from being able to be flexible and fast in terms of moving people around and putting people in the right positions? Especially in this case the public system seems unable to provide this flexibility. I do not know whether it is a Garda problem or whether it applies to other areas of the public service. Why is it still taking us a year or two to get there? What both Deputy Commissioner Twomey and Commissioner O'Sullivan said is that they could not do it because they did not have authorisation to employ the necessary people. Why is our public administrative system so slow to put the people in the right place?

It is true to say that there is a lot of executive action changing things. I know, for example, that the divisional structure, which was criticised by the inspectorate, is being changed. I know that there is a new ICT plan being put into the Garda.

There is a restructuring of the traffic section, as the Deputy knows. There are a whole range of things that are being implemented. The difficulty we have is that we are on a painful journey of reform and what we have seen in the last few days demonstrates that some of the cultural issues within An Garda Síochána have not been resolved by the programme of reform. I took note of the Garda Inspectorate's reports and agree there is a huge amount of recommendations therein to be implemented. We now have a Policing Authority, just one year in position, which is taking on a stronger role. We are on a journey of reform but there is no doubt that what we have seen today has shaken peoples' confidence in the way the system is working.

The Deputy has asked what a new review could do but this will not be a review like those of the past, where we looked specifically at whistleblowers, at one district or one segment of Garda operations. This will look at root and branch issues. For example, should we separate security from policing so that we could have a different approach to policing and different forms of accountability? That has been discussed in the past. Those issues are now on the table. We recognise that cultural change within An Garda Síochána will need more than just the approach that has been adopted to date. That is not to say that many of the proposals in the Garda Inspectorate's reports and the proposals from the Policing Authority are not on the right track. However, when we turn up stones and find the scale of what happened on this occasion, we cannot just turn around and say it is business as usual and this will work. This has exposed real problems and the Government feels that we must address them in a different way. We must look at more serious structural issues as well as the ones that are already being addressed. That is why we are open to discussing, not just within Government but with other interested parties, the way in which we should structure this. It will not protect us from other issues being found out but we must have confidence that we have a structure that will deal with those issues as they arise.

I agree that we need to look at the cultural background in An Garda Síochána that allowed this to take place. We should also look at the bigger, wider structural issues in terms of what An Garda Síochána is and should be doing. However, we also have a structural problem in our Government and public administration system. When senior members of An Garda Síochána are asked questions in public fora, such as at today's meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality and the last meeting of the Policing Authority, as to why the clear recommendations, which we spent a lot of time formulating, on the immediate employment of the right people to start addressing problems have not been implemented, the answer we get is that they could not do that because they were not authorised to put the staff in place. We got rid of the employment control framework four years ago, which was a deeply damaging piece of administrative structuring. Why is it then that we still seem to have an inability to be flexible and to allow agencies to employ people quickly? We saw that it in here when the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight could not get somebody for six months. What is the Minister's experience of this, as a line Minister? Is there a problem with agencies of the State being able to get swift authorisation to employ the right people?

I also ask the Minister to answer my first question, namely, does he agree that we should have a legislative amendment to enable the courts to run through all of the 14,700 wrongful convictions in one fell swoop?

I just do not accept that staff and resources are behind the sort of problems that we are seeing in An Garda Síochána. They are not behind the issues that we have put out to a tribunal or behind the issue of the falsifying of reporting that we have seen. Those issues cannot be explained by staffing and resources. Of course, staffing and resources will help in the context of implementing reform but we have had reform even with diminishing resources. Deputy Howlin will attest to the fact that even in times of diminishing resources, we must have reform. I do not accept that argument at all.

That is their argument.

I do not accept that argument. The Garda Inspectorate made 81 recommendations and we need to see those implemented. They will take time but we need to do this root and branch investigation.

On the issue of the wrongful convictions and a single Act, as I understand it, 96% of those cases involved other issues as well. It is not a single, uniform batch that we can just change at the stroke of a pen. Many of these cases involved multiple charges on the charge sheet, as well as the one that arose in this case, where the fixed charge notice had not been sent out. I am not sure it is as simple as the Deputy describes but I know that An Garda Síochána and the Director of Public Prosecutions are looking at possible solutions. If there is a legislative element to that, I am sure the Government will consider it.