Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

We also seem to have some sort of different understanding of what identification is. Identification is identification. Whether you are comparing one video camera to another CCTV feed or picking out someone getting off a bus and going into a house, it is used for identification. Biometric identification is not understood to be that you just compare something with a name in a database. Identification also follows people around through facial recognition and that is a database, even if it is on a slightly behind clock. Biometric identification is not just a list of names you have on your system and you compare them to see if a person happens to be a particular named person. Biometric identification is the result of identification. It is probably later in the Bill in another section, but the required rank of garda is not stated in the context of going back to Article 26.10, which Ireland seems to have a carve-out from, in relation to seeking approval from a judicial authority for the use of biometric identification. There is also another part of the Bill that says a garda can just ask a fellow garda - another human - to look at this and ask whether they think someone is a particular person. That seems to be standard enough, which is not appropriate. I do not mean to be insulting in any shape or form but I do not know if the Minister, when he is speaking about and explaining biometric analysis, truly, when he breaks it down, does not see how that this is biometric identification, given that the end result is identification.

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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