Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I agree with the concerns raised in this regard. With respect to the Minister, the recital of the AI Act talks about the "identification of natural persons, without their ... involvement ... through the comparison of a person’s biometric data with the biometric data contained in a reference database". The Minister pointed out the language that has been added into the legislation, which probably does need to be amended on Report Stage, is relation to biometric identification. The Minister seems to be adding in the fact of a person being named in the context of the definition. If individuals are not named, then it is not identification. The Minister himself, though, used the words "to identify unidentified individuals" and assist in "identifying” multiple times during his own speech. What is being done is identifying. If there is an image of somebody and a video of somebody and it is said that is the same person in both instances, then they are being identified. That is biometric identification. The fact that it is not known whether the person's name is Stephen, John, Tony or whatever else might be is a little bit by the by, because this aspect is concerned with biometric identification and not named identification. The attempt to narrow down the definition of “biometric identification”, to say it is only applicable in the cases of named individuals and thereby leave this whole world open for a completely newly invented concept of biometric analysis does not fly. It is not consistent with what is happening in the AI Act and in the law. It reminds me, very vividly, of an attempt previously by a Department to try to literally redefine its way out of a breach of European law. That was the Department of Social Protection. I remember having a discussion with the then Minister, Regina Doherty, where it was said that we simply had different understandings of what biometric meant. The problem, though, was that her definition and understanding was wrong and was found to be wrong by the Data Protection Commissioner. The Department of Social Protection at that time was keen to claim that the thing it was doing, which was clearly biometric, was not biometric. We pointed out that the proposed public service card contained biometric information and the Data Protection Commissioner confirmed it was biometric information later. The company employed to fulfil the contract to make these public service cards was originally named Biometric Card Services. The company renamed itself when it got the State contract to Security Card Concepts. The idea was to literally rename the company, whose title accidentally mentioned that what it was doing was biometric, as Security Card Concepts. When I look at biometric analysis, a little bit of the Security Card Concepts situation comes to mind. It sounds a little bit like the same thing. We know what biometric identification is. It comes with the proper weight and precedent of the law and has been identified as an area with regulations attached internationally. The Government, therefore, has decided to put a new thing in the mix called “biometric analysis”, which means something slightly different and where it can wing it and do things its own way. It is a weak ploy to literally rename something. It does not stand up in this case and did not stand up for the Department of social protection when it tried to do this. It is a distraction from the proper discussion we should be able to have around biometric identification. All the activities the Minister has described are biometric identification. This is a distraction as well from having a discussion of how we can put safeguards in place in relation to this concept, how to do it responsibly, how we can address it in the best and most appropriate way and how we can bring ourselves into the closest alignment with best international practice. The Minister is now saying we will talk about biometric identification at another time but that this legislation is about biometric analysis. An attempt is being made to almost try to exclude all the relevant information from the debate and discussion on biometric identification. I plead with the Minister for honesty here and a reflection of the fact that biometric analysis is effectively biometric identification. Let us not try to create an easy opt-out. Let us, instead, have a meaningful discussion on biometric identification and everything that comes with it. --- 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/2026-06-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-10