Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel

I might be the only person in this House who suffers from a condition called parliamentary masochism. I dragged myself away from committee room 4 where we had harpists performing reels and came up here to be entertained by the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025. I came in at a very good time because I am addled by the biometric identification and biometric analysis and I am finding it curiously entertaining and informative. I ask the Minister if he could throw some light on an aspect of it. He was talking about biometric identification. This is a process, I gather, whereby gardaí will be able to look at a database of images, presumably facial images, from wherever. I was wondering where these images will come from. Will they be Europol images or from Interpol? Will we have access to the databases of so-called bad actors on the other side of Europe? Will the Minister enlighten us as to where the bank of image data that will be used will come from?
I thank the Minister for enduring my really profound ignorance on this subject, but it is becoming more and more entertaining by the minute.

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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