Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I move amendment No. 2:
In page 6, after line 40, to insert the following:
“(3A) A member of An Garda Síochána shall not deploy biometric analysis unless authorised in advance by a member of An Garda Síochána not below the rank of Chief Superintendent, who shall record in writing the grounds of necessity and proportionality for such deployment.”.
This amendment was discussed on Committee Stage. It seeks to ensure that there are safeguards in terms of how this technology can be used and, crucially, to ensure that there is no overreach, by ensuring that the deployment of biometric analysis or facial recognition must be authorised in advance by a garda not below the rank of chief superintendent. As I said during the previous discussions on this Bill, we know that gardaí have faced disciplinary processes for misuse of the PULSE system in the past, for example. There was one particularly horrendous case in which a former garda was ultimately jailed for inciting strangers to rape a colleague. That type of situation is in the minority. It is something that does not happen and we would not expect to happen. The individual pleaded guilty to the unauthorised disclosure of Garda PULSE personal data on 14 different individuals. While it is important to say, as I mentioned, that such misuses would only ever relate to a very tiny minority, it does point to a misuse of the PULSE system and, in my view, reinforces the need to ensure we have proper protections in place to ensure that when we are adopting new technologies that they are only used when appropriate, that they are properly authorised and that they are absolutely necessary for the investigation of serious crimes or missing persons or matters of that nature. It is appropriate that we would set an appropriate level of Garda rank who could authorise that and in my view the authorisation should come from a chief superintendent or above.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13