Police accountability in Ireland: an analysis of the problems posed by the legal, constitutional and political dimensions and how they might be addressed

The concept of police accountability is not susceptible to a universal or concise definition. In the context of this thesis it is treated as embracing two fundamental components. First, it entails an arrangement whereby an individual, a minority and the whole community have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the formulation of the principles and policies governing police operations. Second, it presupposes that those who have suffered as victims of unacceptable police behaviour should have an effective remedy. These ingredients, however, cannot operate in a vacuum. They must find an accommodation with the equally vital requirement that the burden of accountability should not be so demanding that the delivery of an effective police service is fatally impaired. While much of the current debate on police accountability in Britain and the USA revolves around the issue of where the balance should be struck in this accommodation, Ireland lacks the very foundation for such a debate as it suffers from a serious deficit in research and writing on police generally. This thesis aims to fill that gap by laying the foundations for an informed debate on police accountability and related aspects of police in Ireland. Broadly speaking the thesis contains three major interrelated components. The first is concerned with the concept of police in Ireland and the legal, constitutional and political context in which it operates. This reveals that although the Garda Siochana is established as a national force the legal prescriptions concerning its role and governance are very vague. Although a similar legislative format in Britain, and elsewhere, have been interpreted as conferring operational autonomy on the police it has not stopped successive Irish governments from exercising close control over the police. The second component analyses the structure and operation of the traditional police accountability mechanisms in Ireland; namely the law and the democratic process. It concludes that some basic aspects of the peculiar legal, constitutional and political structures of policing seriously undermine their capacity to deliver effective police accountability. In the case of the law, for example, the status of, and the broad discretion vested in, each individual member of the force ensure that the traditional legal actions cannot always provide redress where individuals or collective groups feel victimised. In the case of the democratic process the integration of the police into the excessively centralised system of executive government, coupled with the refusal of the Minister for Justice to accept responsibility for operational matters, project a barrier between the police and their accountability to the public. The third component details proposals on how the current structures of police accountability in Ireland can be strengthened without interfering with the fundamentals of the law, the democratic process or the legal and constitutional status of the police. The key elements in these proposals are the establishment of an independent administrative procedure for handling citizen complaints against the police and the establishment of a network of local police-community liaison councils throughout the country coupled with a centralised parliamentary committee on the police. While these proposals are analysed from the perspective of maximising the degree of police accountability to the public they also take into account the need to ensure that the police capacity to deliver an effective police service is not unduly impaired as a result.

Electrochemical biosensor based on microfabricated electrode arrays for life sciences applications

In developing a biosensor, the utmost important aspects that need to be emphasized are the specificity and selectivity of the transducer. These two vital prerequisites are of paramount in ensuring a robust and reliable biosensor. Improvements in electrochemical sensors can be achieved by using microelectrodes and to modify the electrode surface (using chemical or biological recognition layers to improve the sensitivity and selectivity). The fabrication and characterisations of silicon-based and glass-based gold microelectrode arrays with various geometries (band and disc) and dimension (ranging from 10 μm-100 nm) were reported. It was found that silicon-based transducers of 10 μm gold microelectrode array exhibited the most stable and reproducible electrochemical measurements hence this dimension was selected for further study. Chemical electrodeposition on both 10 μm microband and microdisc were found viable by electro-assisted self-assembled sol-gel silica film and nanoporous-gold electrodeposition respectively. The fabrication and characterisations of on-chip electrochemical cell was also reported with a fixed diameter/width dimension and interspacing variation. With this regard, the 10 μm microelectrode array with interspacing distance of 100 μm exhibited the best electrochemical response. Surface functionalisations on single chip of planar gold macroelectrodes were also studied for the immobilisation of histidine-tagged protein and antibody. Imaging techniques such as atomic force microscopy, fluorescent microscopy or scanning electron microscope were employed to complement the electrochemical characterisations. The long-chain thiol of self-assembled monolayer with NTA-metal ligand coordination was selected for the histidine-tagged protein while silanisation technique was selected for the antibody immobilisation. The final part of the thesis described the development of a T-2 labelless immunosensor using impedimetric approach. Good antibody calibration curve was obtained for both 10 μm microband and 10 μm microdisc array. For the establishment of the T-2/HT-2 toxin calibration curve, it was found that larger microdisc array dimension was required to produce better calibration curve. The calibration curves established in buffer solution show that the microelectrode arrays were sensitive and able to detect levels of T-2/HT-2 toxin as low as 25 ppb (25 μg kg-1) with a limit of quantitation of 4.89 ppb for a 10 μm microband array and 1.53 ppb for the 40 μm microdisc array.