Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-02
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

I want to reaffirm and agree with the amendments that my colleague, Senator Ruane, put forward previously in relation to stop and search. They are not addressed by this. They are not about documenting persons who are prosecuted, but about documenting patterns in how gardaí are deploying or using the powers that are being given to them. Monitoring who is stopped and who is searched is very different from tracking persons who may be moving through criminal prosecution. Of course, this is one of the issues with racial profiling, which we factually know to be an issue in nearly every jurisdiction where it has been examined, and we have seen those issues particularly in the UK, the United States and elsewhere. There is an issue with how stop and search is used, and there are concerns.
We in Ireland are in a position where we will not know if there are issues with the targeting of particular vulnerable individuals based on the colour of their skin or their ethnicity. We will not know that information because it is only in those cases where there is a prosecution that there will be monitoring. Again, even if we look at those figures, we will only have the figures for the prosecution, and it may well end up looking like more persons are being prosecuted for a particular offence without us knowing that a vastly disproportionate and far greater percentage of them are represented in the stop and search. We just do not know. If we are not monitoring that information, if the information is not being gathered and if the choice is being made to not know how stop and search is being deployed and used, then we are missing key information in terms of ensuring that we do not have inequality and either racial profiling or other profiling of particular cohorts and communities in the way that policing is done in Ireland.
With respect, I disagree with the Minister. I concur with Senator McDowell in saying that these amendments do not deal with the issue. The Minister suggested that this addresses these issues, but it does not.

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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