Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I wish I could say the same. I am very positively disposed to this legislation. I thank the Minister for giving his comprehensive statement to us. I smiled with delight somewhat when I heard the Minister pointing out further elements of and commitments in the programme for Government and that he is driving them through. Clearly, this is a Minister with intent and who has a reforming zeal. He is also keeping one eye on the programme for Government, which is encouraging. I do not think any other Minister has ever come in here to us in the past year and a half and talked about the programme for Government in terms of rattling off the to-do list, as the Minister has. Well done. It is great to see that the Minister is clearly very focused on that. The Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration carried out an extensive paper and pre-legislative scrutiny on this Bill. There are elements that have changed. I acknowledge that Senators McDowell, Gallagher and Ruane, who are on that committee, made 32 recommendations. It is worth looking at the analysis of those recommendations as compared with the Bill that is before us today. I thank the Oireachtas Library and Research team. I do not know if the Minister has seen their report yet. It is a really good report. Every Minister should always see the Oireachtas Library and Research work. They have done an analysis on the 32 recommendations in the report and have broken them up into four statuses. They say that the key issues that have clearly been accepted and reflected in the Bill amount to four. There are other areas. Adoption of current issues have not been brought into play. They raise interesting points. I intend to look at one or two amendments. Before I do so, I hope I can engage directly with the Minister's Department because I believe in being proactive with the Department rather than coming in here. It is only as a last resort. It may be an issue of clarification. I thank the library and research team for the extensive work that they have done. It aids us in analysing legislation. That is what they are there. I draw that fact to the Minister's attention. This document was carried out by Karen McLaughlin, senior parliamentary researcher. It is dated 16 December 2025. It is interesting to look at a number of submissions. I am going reference them rather than talk about them. There was a very interesting submission from the Law Society. There was a particularly interesting one from the Rape Crisis Ireland. There was a submission from An Garda Síochána. There were interesting issues there. Of particular interest were submissions by the Data Protection Commissioner, Safe Ireland and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. There are many more, but these were the six that I took out and read. There are some key issues there. I do not think we are that far apart. Facial recognition is about technology, data protection and impact assessment, which the Minister dealt with in his statement to us today. Legislation and the code of practice are clearly important. What do we want at the end of all this legislation? We want to ensure for Irish citizens that there are high standards that the public can expect of An Garda Síochána. I know An Garda Síochána is committed too. It is about confidence in a system that is not subject to or open to abuse. I referenced those particular submissions to the Minister. I have a few amendments in mind. I am a pragmatist at best. I would like to work with the Minister's officials next week, send a draft to them, and maybe they will be able to clarify some of those points. That would be very helpful. I wish the Minister well on this important legislation. I understand the significance of embracing innovation and technology. At the end of the day, what the Minister said last night to us in another debate within his brief, there are a lot of very dangerous and sinister people out there. We have to use all technologies in identifying, exposing and bringing people to justice and account. That ranges from sexual offences, rape, intimidation, blackmail and all sorts of other issues. When we talk about smarter gardaí, it is about being smart. Gardaí on the streets does not necessarily mean everything for people. It is always important that while nothing deters crime, we must always go back to community. We need to get under the skin of why so many crimes are happening, but that is for another day. I wish the Minister well. We are going to embrace technology and innovation. If that aids and makes this a safer place for our citizens, then that has to be the right thing to do. --- 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/2026-05-27/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-27