Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill 2026 [Seanad]: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
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Gary Gannon (SD), Dublin Central

I am very happy to speak on this Bill as it has been a long time coming. I have no doubt about the need to consolidate Garda powers, which are scattered across different pieces of legislation, and to put clear rules around the exercise of those powers. There are positive provisions here. The statutory right to know why one is being stopped and searched is, of course, important, as is entitlement to have a solicitor present during an interview.
However, this legislation also deals with some of the most intrusive powers we have given to the State. It is about stopping, searching and detaining people and accessing their phones and computers. It is potentially about accessing extremely sensitive and privileged information. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable that we spend time getting the safeguards right.
This Bill has a very long history. The general scheme was published 2021 and it went to pre-legislative scrutiny in 2022. However, it is also important to acknowledge that what is before us is not simply that general scheme finally arriving in the Dáil five years later. The original theme was much broader. It contained 68 heads across seven parts and dealt with wider codification of search, arrest and detention. It also contained a dedicated part on the protection of fundamental rights. That makes proper parliamentary scrutiny all the more important.
Some of the concerns we are discussing today are not new at all. One of the recommendations to come directly from pre-legislative scrutiny was that ethnicity should be recorded during "stop and search" so we can build a proper data set on who is being subjected to these powers and how appropriate they are. That recommendation is not in the Bill before us. If amendments are brought forward on Committee Stage, I hope we do not get the usual response from the Minister that Opposition Members are trying to hold up legislation that has already taken too long. Some of these questions have been sitting there for years.
I followed Seanad debates on the Bill closely and there was very important scrutiny there. Senators were not trying to prevent gardaí from having the powers they need but they were trying to make the legislation better. I intend to bring amendments forward on Committee Stage on a number of the issues I am raising and I hope the Minister will engage with them in the spirit intended.
One issue I am particularly concerned with is the protection of journalists and their sources. I have read some excellent briefings as a result of thorough research by civil liberties groups and they have identified a fundamental problem with how this Bill is structured. Under section 29, a garda can go to the District Court and seek an authorisation in relation to a device that has already been lawfully seized. That authorisation can allow gardaí to capture data and carry out privileged screening or a digital forensic examination. The journalist is not there nor is the solicitor. Nobody is there to argue the other side of this. Section 24 allows the High Court to determine whether material is actually privileged. That sounds like a safeguard but the problem is when it happens. By the time they get to the High Court, the material may already have been screened or examined by a garda. How does one protect the identity of a source after information identifying that source has already been seen? If a journalist is speaking to a whistleblower - a topic I imagine we will all be thinking about later today and tomorrow - the person’s name is in his or her phone and there are messages between them and there are emails. There may be documents stored on the device which are accessible through it. That material is assessed and subsequently goes before the High Court. The High Court might ultimately decide it is privileged and the material might have to be deleted but the information has already been seen. One cannot unsee it at that point. That matters far beyond the individual journalist involved.
People come forward to journalists because they believe their identity can be protected. Sometimes they are exposing wrongdoing in powerful organisations or institutions and sometimes they are taking a considerable personal or professional risk in doing so. We began to write this speech yesterday when scrutinising the Bill but those last sentences are far more important today given what we are about to hear on "RTÉ Investigates" this evening. If those people cannot have confidence in source protection some simply will not come forward.
There is another way of doing this and we only have to look north of the Border to see that. The procedure in Northern Ireland is such that where potentially privileged journalistic material can be dealt with through an all-parties process before police are permitted to access it, the journalist and his or her legal representatives can be heard by the court, which considers the seriousness of the offence, the evidential importance of the material, whether other ways of obtaining the evidence have been exhausted and whether granting access is in the public interest. It seems to be a much more sensible sequence to decide whether the material can be accessed and then allow access rather than allowing it and then subsequently deciding whether it should have been protected after the fact. There were amendments in the Seanad that attempted to address this but they were not accepted. I intend to return to this on Committee Stage because the answer could simply be that there is a High Court safeguard somewhere further down the process. The question is whether that safeguard comes early enough to mean anything at all.
To turn to stop and search, if we are putting these powers on a consolidated statutory footing, we should also put in place the means to know how they are actually being used. This is where the failure to implement the recommendations from pre-legislative scrutiny becomes particularly difficult to understand. Stop and search records should include relevant demographic information, subject to appropriate data protection safeguards, and it should be published. Why are we still having to argue for this a full five years later? Without that information, we simply do not know who is being stopped, whether particular ethnic groups are being stopped disproportionately, whether Travellers are being particularly affected or whether young people in particular working-class communities encounter these powers considerably more often than other young people in more affluent areas. I am not saying we should simply assume that is happening. That is my entire point; we need the data. However, testimony we get from young people in particular in communities I represent says that they are already faced with these sequences. If somebody believes there is widespread racial profiling, we should be able to have the evidence. If An Garda Síochána says these powers are being exercised fairly and proportionately across different communities, the data should be capable of demonstrating that fact. I was particularly struck by what happened when this issue came up on Committee Stage in the Seanad. An amendment was brought forward dealing with recording information, including race, ethnicity and nationality, in respect of stop and search. It was initially ruled out of order on the basis that it could impose a charge on the Exchequer with potential charges to police using leading systems effectively, PULSE, forming part of the issue. That is absolutely outrageous. We are recording stop and search anyway. All we are talking about is what information goes into that record. Recording ethnicity has already been recommended through the pre-legislative scrutiny process and that is exactly why I have difficulty when legitimate amendments are portrayed as attempts to delay legislation rather than simply improve it. Of course legislation has to move but the purpose of our Parliament is not to see how quickly we can get a Bill from one end to the other.
The final and perhaps most important area I want to address is that of drugs use. I chaired the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use this year and spent a considerable amount of time engaging with people who use drugs for a variety of reasons as well as people working in addiction services, academics, gardaí and communities which have lived through the consequences of drug policy for decades.
While personal possession is already criminalised under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, we cannot pretend for a second that provisions of this Bill have nothing to do with the criminalisation of people for drug use - they absolutely do. Controlled drugs are brought within the definition of a "relevant article" for the purpose of the stop-and-search framework. We are consolidating within this new Garda powers framework the policing mechanisms dealing with enforcement of that existing criminal offence. That distinction matters but so does the reality. The work we have been doing on drugs policy has been moving in a very different direction. We have spent years talking about moving towards a health-led response. Our committee recommended the repeal of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Minister's policy talks of a health-led approach. This Bill does not criminalise possession but does consolidate the architecture through which that criminalisation operates. That makes the absence of proper demographic information even more concerning.
Drug use does not belong to one social class or postcode. People use drugs in affluent communities and in disadvantaged communities alike, but that does not mean everybody has the same experience of being policed for it. If a young person in one part of Dublin is repeatedly stopped and searched for suspected possession while somebody doing exactly the same thing elsewhere almost never encounters a Garda stop and search, that obviously matters. We need to know whether that is happening; if it is not, we should have the information to demonstrate that too. If the State retains the criminal offence of personal possession and gives gardaí powers to stop and search people in connection with it, we should at minimum be capable of examining which communities are experiencing those powers. Otherwise, we will know even less about who is carrying the burden of our continued policy of criminalisation.
There are many other issues in the Bill that will need detailed consideration on Committee Stage. It is striking that the 2021 general scheme was presented by the Government as having a strong focus on human rights and contained a dedicated part on fundamental rights, while those express human rights provisions are absent from the Bill before us. That deserves an explanation and I hope the Minister gives one in his response.
There are three things I particularly ask the Minister to consider: look again at journalistic privilege and the model operating in Northern Ireland; accept the principle that if the State is to be given stop-and-search powers, we should collect enough demographic information to know how those powers are being used; and look at the provisions concerning controlled drugs in the context of the direction we claim to be taking on national drugs policy - that is the Minister's direction, not mine. Gardaí need clear powers and the public needs effective policing, but neither of those things is undermined by safeguards or appropriate access to facts; they are strengthened by them.
We will table amendments on Committee Stage on these issues. Some will deal with concerns raised since the Bill was substantially reshaped. Others will deal with recommendations that have effectively been sitting on the table since pre-legislative scrutiny. Either way, I hope the response from Government will not simply be that the Bill has taken long enough and needs to pass. It has clearly been altered substantially since being introduced.
I will touch on some aspects of the Minister's contribution. There is one I was not going to bring up but the Minister played the music - the issue of solicitors. The Minister said he hoped to have enough solicitors in our District Court. I would argue strongly that that is on him. The Minister and I differ completely when it comes to the reform needed. I disagree with the measures he has taken and I find the narrative that has been building really challenging. The absence of evidence supporting the measures he has taken is quite striking, but we are where we are. The Law Society has written to the Minister asking him to engage with a mediator. No harm can come from talking. I hope the Minister revisits that and that we find a solution to this. The impacts in the courts are clear for everybody to see. By no measure is our Courts Service working effectively.
The Minister said something in the summer that is also relevant to this Bill and to stop-and-search powers. After the tragedy on the M9, he gave an interview to thejournal.ie and spoke about 1,000 young people in the State being outside the recourse of the Garda youth diversion programme. I agree with him to a point but he lost me when he did not say what we would do about that. The 2018 Greentown report also talked about 1,000 young people in the State who were being groomed into criminality. I would say there is significant overlap between those two cohorts. We have also had considerable debate on parental responsibility and whether parents should be punished for the crimes of their children. Whatever the Minister's view on that, we have to accept there are in this State complex issues related to generational poverty and trauma which have been well discussed. There are also children being groomed into criminality. The effects are seen on our streets in the unsightly elements of young people selling drugs on scooters. We will not be able to slowly police our way out of that. I would love to be part of the conversation with the Minister on the new youth justice strategy. There are good examples in the Belvedere Youth Club in town of working with children between the ages of seven and nine. I would love to talk to the Minister further about that. This is something I would like us to work together on.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16