Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27 ============================================================ Martin Conway (IND), Administrative Panel The Minister is welcome to the House. It is great that he comes to deal with his legislation on such a regular basis. We have spoken on previous occasions about Ministers having respect for the House. He has shown respect in spades and he is very welcome, as always. The Bill is part of a commitment in the programme for Government to embrace and develop new technologies in An Garda Síochána to enable the force to take full advantage of those new technologies to do its job more effectively. Facial recognition is in operation in many jurisdictions, in particular in airports and so on. Enabling An Garda Síochána to utilise and benefit from this type of technology makes absolute sense. I am glad to hear that it is recognised across the House that this is a step in the right direction. AI is something we are all trying to get our heads around. Clearly, it will define society in the future. It is the next generation, the same way as social media was to the generation of the early noughties. An Garda Síochána needs to be on top of it and to benefit from it. We do not need to be laggards when it comes to this. Rather, we need to be out in front, similar to how we were European leaders when it came to the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, which has been imitated by other jurisdictions. We need to adopt the same approach when it comes to embracing technology, given the fact that many of the tech giants have their European headquarters in Dublin. We need to reflect that in our modern policing. Having been on the political scrutiny committee of Europol for seven or eight years, and having attended its meetings on a regular basis in Brussels and other European countries, I know how committed Europol is to embracing and sharing technology. We need to be front and centre as part of that. The Bill is welcome. It is good to see the justice elements of the programme for Government being implemented in a very judicious way. I commend the Minister on that. The Minister was in Clare a couple of weeks ago, for which I thank him. It was a visit organised by Deputy Cathal Crowe. He spoke at the Ennis Chamber of Commerce and met a group of business people, along with public representatives, in Ennistymon. There is a major issue with a lack of gardaí in the Ennistymon-Kilrush area, which has been amalgamated into one district. Last Saturday night, there was a shortage of personnel on the ground. I believe only one patrol car was operating between Kilrush and Ballyvaughan. The patrol car was diverted to Shannon because a plane had to be protected. That leaves the system vulnerable. I know it is a policing matter and a matter for the Garda Commissioner, but to be fair to our chief superintendent in Clare, he can only deal with the resources he has and he has to supply them as he sees fit. It is a loaves and fishes scenario. Perhaps the Minister is able to do something about additional resources in the Clare division so that situations like this do not happen on weekends. Last weekend was a beautiful weekend. The populations of Kilkee and Lahinch balloon when the weather is like this. We cannot have vulnerabilities in the system. I appeal to the Minister to address that. On the Bill, it is great to see it being introduced in order to take full advantage of modern technologies and innovations so that An Garda Síochána can do its job more effectively, efficiently and determinedly. --- 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