THE NEW policy of giving reasons for decisions not to prosecute in some cases involving death did not arise from concerns about accountability to victims, but was about fairness, Director of Public Prosecutions James Hamilton said yesterday.
He emphasised that the office of the DPP carried out its functions on behalf of the people, not of the victims of crime. Mr Hamilton was speaking to a seminar in Dublin on accountability in the public service.
"There is not and will not be accountability to victims in the sense that we will regard ourselves as bound by their wishes or will allow them to determine how cases will proceed," he said.
However, "it is only right," he added, "that citizens who have been particularly affected by a crime, whether directly as victims or whether as the relatives of victims of crime, should wherever possible be kept informed as to why a decision, which has an impact on how they lead their lives, was made.
"The victim of crime has a special interest in the outcome of [the] case over and above the interests of any other individual citizen."
He said that the office was accountable to the public in a number of ways. It was accountable to the Oireachtas for the expenditure of public money through the normal governmental accounting procedures.
The DPP is always accountable to the courts in respect of prosecutions in the sense that if he behaves wrongly he is likely to be criticised by the court, he said at the seminar, organised by Mason Hayes Curran solicitors.
It is the practice to keep An Garda Síochána informed as to the thinking behind decisions made in the office, which ensures that the force is fully aware of the requirements of the prosecution service. If the office behaved in an erratic or unsustainable way, the Garda would be likely to complain about it, he said. In addition, both the Garda and injured parties are entitled to seek a review of decisions where they are dissatisfied with a decision.
Niamh Brennan, professor of management in UCD, told the seminar that the public sector was like a public limited company, in that both took other people's money. However, taxpayers, unlike shareholders, could not sell their shares and walk away. This imposed a higher level of accountability on the public sector than on a plc, she said. Yet the commission on the health service, which she chaired, found a complacent and casual attitude towards accountability.
She stressed that there were many in the public service whose high level of commitment and work ethic was "mind-boggling", for relatively small amounts of money.
But there were also downsides in the public service in relation to accountability.