Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill 2026 [Seanad]: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
============================================================

Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire

Broadly speaking, I welcome the Bill. I have heard what other Members have said about it, and I have some sympathy with the idea that it is a modernisation of Garda powers. It is necessary for us in the context of how technology and possession change to have regard to what powers gardaí need to do the job they need to do. For example, in the case of legislation that had previously been introduced to empower gardaí to demand passwords and access to those phones and things like that, I have misgivings about them but I also recognise the need for them. The reality at the moment is that gardaí have a very difficult job to do.
However, I also think that the power to stop somebody and search them on the street is a hugely significant one. Obviously, people are protected constitutionally from the abuse of that power. That is also a protection they enjoy. My concern is that there are definitely times when gardaí exercise this power capriciously. There are definitely times that in my own experience in the criminal courts, particularly on the defence side, I have seen situations where I was pretty sure that gardaí had exercised those powers inappropriately. You will often see people being searched around the city or elsewhere. It does not require a great deal, for example, for a garda to conduct a search under section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. The reasonable suspicion point is very easily overcome by a garda who wants to do so.
What is proposed in this Bill is problematic from the point of view that it empowers the gardaí to conduct a search of an individual if they have the relevant article that is described in the Act. The relevant article is really anything nefarious, something that is suspected to have been stolen or something more serious, such as a weapon or something else. That is a significant power, and it is not clear to me that the Bill defines with clarity what the basis of that reasonable suspicion is. There is a great deal of case law on this, and this is a matter that has been tested by the courts time and again as to what constitutes reasonable suspicion. When I was in the District Court doing drink-driving cases, we had what we used to call the Templemore Four, namely, unsteady on their feet, smell of alcohol on the breath, slurred speech and not fully focused sight. I felt, rightly or wrongly, when I was defending drink-driving cases that one or all of these would be trotted out as a basis on which the garda had decided to administer a roadside breath test because he or she needed to have a reasonable suspicion to administer that test. Similarly, in relation to people who are stopped on the street and suspected of being in possession of drugs contrary to the provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act, the garda needs only to have a reasonable suspicion before conducting a search under section 23. It is a significant power that is not tempered by what is provided for in this Bill. Again, that reasonable suspicion has been corralled a little bit by the courts. I do not really think the extent to which a garda being able to say, "Well, I believed he had the stolen item in his pocket and, therefore, I conducted a search", impinges on a person's individual liberty is a sufficient basis for a garda to conduct a search, so I have misgivings about this.
Having said that, I recognise that there are provisions in the Bill that go quite a long way towards requiring gardaí to essentially back up their suspicion. The recording, for example, of the circumstances around the offence is really important. I note the ICCL has said it does not think that the details the Bill suggests would be recorded are sufficient. Again, I do not necessarily agree with that criticism. What I do have a concern about is if, for example, I am a garda on patrol and I stop somebody, conduct a search and put into my notebook all the details that I am supposed to under the Act, well and good, but what happens if I do it at the end of the shift? What happens if I do it two days later? What happens if I do it two days before the court case? There is no way for anybody to control when that is done or how it is done. For example, in this modern day of technology, when gardaí have more technology at their disposal, is there not a way in which we could timestamp that entry so that we could prove it is contemporaneous with the search, and therefore could be a more reliable evidentiary source if that search were ever challenged? There is the notion that a garda could do it retrospectively. There is nothing in the Act that says it must be made in the official Garda notebook, for example. It would be helpful if you could go through the book and see if the entries on either side of it were chronological with it, which would indicate that it had been made at the time. In the absence of that, I wonder whether there are sufficient controls in relation to that search.
I say this conscious of the fact that, broadly speaking, it is important to have this legislation. The search-and-seizure powers do need to be updated. I do not think they take cognisance of modern technology in terms of some of the things that people involved in criminal activity can hide and the ways in which they can hide them. We have to be very careful and I know that is not a very politically savvy thing to say, because at the end of the day most people think of an accused person and really the gardaí should get what they need to get to ensure that they catch the people who are doing the thing that is wrong. I have sympathy with that view but we have to think of this as what if it is me or a person who is wrongly accused. What if that person has their rights infringed? That can be quite pervasive in the impact it has on society, people's relationship with the Garda, the faith in the system and the individual liberties of people, which are so important within our system. Gardaí enjoy a position where they are trusted by communities. They have good relationships with the people they police and that is a really important thing to preserve. If we push this too far, then the danger is that we will have a situation where gardaí start to trample on that relationship, start to lose the confidence of the people they are policing, and cause people to lose faith that they are exercising their powers in the way that they should and that they are doing it according to the law.
In short, I am saying there is a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. I am wondering if on Committee Stage we could consider some kind of an amendment, particularly in relation to the recording of the details of the search, that might breed greater confidence in the evidence that would ultimately be given by a garda in the event that a search is challenged. That might say to the ordinary person on the street who might be the subject of one of these searches, "Here's your safeguard. Here's something you can rely on to ensure that the garda is doing his or her job in the way that he or she should." I will happily work with the Minister on whatever amendment he thinks might do that, if there is some way in which we can just strengthen that power.
I recognise the job gardaí have to do is extraordinarily difficult. The gathering of evidence is no mean feat, yet they are expected time and time again to come to court with the requisite amount of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody has committed an offence. It might be plain as the nose on their face because they were there but they have to find an evidential way by which to demonstrate it in court. I fully recognise the difficulties they face in that regard. I want us in this House to help them and to give them the tools and the equipment they need but I also want to safeguard the confidence the public has in our criminal justice system.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

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