Criminal Justice (International Cooperation on Electronic Evidence and Other Matters) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

My apologies. I meant to speak to amendment No. 3. It is actually sometimes useful to get the Minister's response before speaking to an amendment.
I would encourage the Minister of State to look back at the Oireachtas justice committee. There was quite substantive discussion with officials on dual criminality, particularly how the civil law system that operates in most of Europe relates to Ireland's common law tradition. If the Minister of State were to review the transcript of that engagement, she would see clearly that the current wording of the legislation failed to fully reassure members this was adequately addressed. The justice committee has the benefit of having members who are much more legally astute than I am. They are able to probe these questions in great detail. The legal practitioners on the committee raised the most serious concerns in respect of this provision. While acknowledging provisions within the e-evidence package, we believe there needs to be strong, robust provisions in any legislation to ensure information will only be provided where any alleged offence constitutes an offence under Irish criminal law. That requires an explicit provision in domestic law.
The Minister of State described amendment No. 2 as very broad and virtually meaningless but it would insert a guidance to the new agency. That is something that has been included in other legislation, where there are guidances to ensure one of the agency's roles is not to overburden a particular sector. The Minister of State says this is EU regulations and directives and there is no ability to amend it but Ministers always seem to forget or ignore when talking about EU regulations and directives in this House that the Government signed up to them at an EU level. Any gaps and failings are failings and gaps on the part of the Government. That needs to be recognised.
Amendment No. 3 is important. I will press it but will not call a vote. I will call a vote on amendment No. 2 because it is really important there be provision in the legislation, not to allow companies escape the provisions of the directive, whose importance we acknowledge, but to recognise this will place an administrative and cost burden on some companies that will not be an issue for the larger companies. We need as legislators to say clearly we want to minimise that administrative and cost burden.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-17