Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I thank the Minister for his reply. I sympathise with a number of the points he has made. It does seem that some things should be declared off limits, publicly. The Minister said that the courts, rules of admissibility of evidence and the like are sufficient to deal with a lot of these matters. Up to a point, I agree with him. His answer presupposes that unethical behaviours will have their comeuppance through the judicial and courts systems. I am not quite clear in my own mind that is always the case. People can be compromised by unethical behaviour who are never charged with anything. If you want to get at Mr. Big you might get at Mr. Big's niece or nephew, get them into trouble and put them in the position that they fear being exposed to criminal prosecution, or to retribution by Mr. Big, in circumstances where they would not have ever put themselves in that position if they were left alone in the first place. It is not the case that every instance of covert policing or use of deception and the like, of an unethical kind, always ends up with the safeguard that evidence, which is the fruit of such behaviour, comes to light in the criminal justice system and the courts, the Minister, or a supervisory judge are in a position to know that has happened.
I believe there is a strong case for minimum ethical standards to apply, so that a person who is no danger to anybody but would be a useful informant is not led into a situation by deception which exposes that person to retribution by criminal elements, on the one hand, or brings to their mind a fear of prosecution, on the other hand. To me, that is a basic proposition of decency and ethics which may never ever come to light at all, yet members of An Garda Síochána are not, as I understand it, really prevented from using such unethical tactics on the basis that the end justifies the means. There is not a public statement even of minimal standards of ethical behaviour involving recruitment of informants, management of informants, methods used to get people to be informants, and the extent of deceptions which can be employed.
I think of the woman in England who had an affair with an undercover police officer for many years and thought that she had a boyfriend. She discovered that she did not have a boyfriend, but a police spy pretending to be her boyfriend for a number of years. That would not necessarily come to a court case, but it is behaviour which is very unethical. The guidelines that I had in mind were not designed to stop the gardaí from being effective, but merely to state basic principles that anybody who wishes to deploy such methods should bear in mind, having regard to standards of decency and ethical behaviour, whether there is a likelihood that it will ever come to public notice.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26