Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-02
============================================================

Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

Amendments Nos. 6 and 7 amend section 14 of the Bill, which provides for the commencement. Amendments Nos. 6 and 7 amend section 14 to provide for the following provisions of the Bill to come into effect on enactment; subsections 1 and 4 of section 1, section 4(b)(i), section 49, section 75 insofar as it relates to the Courts Service, section 76, section 80 and Parts 3, 4 and 5.
Amendment No. 99 relates to an amendment to Schedule 5 to the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 to add the Courts Service to the Schedule. Other operational criminal justice agencies, such as the Irish Prison Service, the Probation Service and Forensic Science Ireland, being under the aegis of my Department, are already specified bodies under the Schedule. The Legal Aid Board is also a specified body. Amendment No. 99 proposes to further amend the Schedule by adding the Director of Public Prosecutions and to remove the current restriction on the Garda whereby the Garda is specified, but only in relation to its own members. The amendment will mean that all operational criminal justice agencies can, within the legal and governance parameters laid down in the 2005 Act, use PPSN in order to be sure of the identities of persons who are going through the criminal justice system or who are availing of services such as vetting and firearms licensing.
Critically, it will also facilitate the development of a unique identifier across the criminal justice system. Currently, most criminal justice agencies use their own separate identifiers. The lack of a single system-wide identifier makes the authentication of identities and records, and the collection and sharing of data, much more time and labour intensive. It also increases the possibility of misidentifications and other mistakes occurring. This amendment will therefore help to address the administrative and operational issues I have just mentioned while also supporting community safety. The development of a unique identifier for the criminal justice system is a programme for Government commitment following a thorough policy review and consultation with relevant stakeholders including victims' representatives and human rights organisations. It was determined that the PPSN would be the most reliable and secure basis for a unique identifier and would provide significant advantages for both the criminal justice system and its users. Criminal justice agencies already have the capacity to gather a significant amount of personal information for purposes of investigation and prosecution. Allowing them to access the PPSN will simply allow that information to be more accurately and easily transferred within compliant data sharing norms.
This is a significant amendment. I listened to Senators McDowell and Ruane when I was dealing with the Garda powers Bill to try to have a provision within that Bill that would require gardaí to record the nationality of individuals who come before An Garda Síochána or come within the criminal justice system. The advantage of this is that we will now get a significant amount of data that will enable us to do research, so the type of information that Senators McDowell and Ruane wanted will be readily available.

---

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/2026-07-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-02