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

I welcome that the Minister of State has put on the record that she believes the information set out in this amendment should be provided in the annual report. That is important. However, I think there is a tacit acknowledgement in what the Minister of State has said that there will be no obligation whatsoever on the new entity to actually provide that because it has been given direction by the legislation to produce an annual report with no direction as to what should be in it. It is like asking 20 children in a class to write a report on their trip to the zoo, which could result in 20 very different versions of what was actually important apart from, hopefully, all of them agreeing that it was enjoyed by all.
A couple of things need to be said in respect of accountability.
First, there is a requirement for the Minister to receive information from the new body. Is the Minister obliged or committed to publishing that or sharing it with the rest of the Oireachtas and to being answerable in respect of it?
Second, the Minister said the body will be subject to freedom of information, FOI, requests. That is not an appropriate mechanism for transparency. Most of the reasons FOIs have to be submitted in the first place are because there is a lack of transparency around a particular matter, obviously personal issues excepted. I do not know why we would put a stipulation on a statutory body to produce an annual report without any detail as to what should be in it. I recall legislation I dealt with directly regarding the Agri-Food Regulator and another body I was dealing with. The provisions around the annual reports were very detailed precisely because the Houses of the Oireachtas wanted to set out very clearly the information they expect in a report. If we do not actually set out what it is we are looking for in an annual report, invariably what ends up happening is that people compare one annual report with another to see what is missing. That is not the way we should be commencing this process at all.

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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