Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill 2023: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2023-12-13
============================================================

Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

I apologise; I know the Senator has heard me say a number of times that I understand the intention. The concept of fairness in the legislative process is subjective and it is not generally used. In fact, I do not think the word “fair” is in any legislation that has gone through the Houses compared to the concepts that are here, namely lawful, professional, punctual and prompt, which are more objective. The purpose of the section is to set out the significance of the Garda Commissioner’s function to direct and to control An Garda Síochána for members and for Garda staff and that is why we have the very clear objective concepts and words being included instead of something that is more subjective and can vary by person. More generally, from a legislative point of view, the word "fair" is not something that would be included for those reasons.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-12-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-12-13