I move: "That the Bill be read a Second Time."

I am very pleased to introduce the Bill to the House. I look forward to hearing the contributions of colleagues.

As Deputies will be aware, back in 2023 the Houses enacted the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) Act. The Bill I am introducing today is an amendment to that legislation. The legislation the Houses enacted in 2023 constituted an important contribution to updating An Garda Síochána's technological capabilities by providing it with a statutory basis for the operation of recording devices. The type of recording devices that An Garda Síochána can use pursuant to the 2023 legislation are body-worn cameras, which have been of great assistance in public policing and automatic number plate recognition, ANPR. The 2023 legislation also sets out how CCTV footage is to be utilised by An Garda Síochána.

The Bill will build on that body of work by providing gardaí with the ability to utilise biometric analysis, a tool that will allow An Garda Síochána to further upgrade its investigative tools for the digital age. This is generally referred to as facial recognition technology, FRT, but there is of course much more to biometric analysis than merely facial recognition. Biometric analysis covers an assessment of the physical, behavioural or physiological characteristics of an individual. In terms of the legislation that I am seeking to introduce for the benefit of An Garda Síochána, it will however predominantly centre on face, gait or other elements such as the build of an individual for the purpose of analysing persons who are on video footage.

This area is relatively complex scientifically. When we talk about biometric analysis, it is important to note that there are four types of biometric analysis or facial recognition that can be used. The first is that we can have retrospective biometric analysis. That is what this Bill seeks to introduce. I will come back to consider that presently. We can also have retrospective biometric identification. I hope to be back in the House in due course for the purpose of legislation in respect of that. Both of them are retrospective. The analysis of footage is for the purpose of retrospectively identifying somebody through a database of facial identities we already have. On top of that, there are also two other types of biometric analysis, which are referred to as "live" - live biometric analysis and live biometric identification. I also hope to come back to the House in respect of them.

In respect of what we are talking about today, it is important to be aware, as many colleagues are, that huge quantities of images and footage are examined as part of investigations. We are all familiar with the request from An Garda Síochána to the public to share dashcam or mobile phone images of an incident, the lead up to an incident, or its aftermath. An Garda Síochána make such requests on the basis that it recognises that such footage often holds key information and evidence. Manual processing of such vast tracts of data can lead to long delays or even missed evidence. Safe and reliable tools now exist to assist law enforcement authorities with their investigations. This Bill provides An Garda Síochána with the ability to sort, filter and categorise images and footage gathered in the course of a Garda investigation. That work is termed "biometric analysis", as defined in the Bill.

The Garda has the power to utilise automated recognition in the context of objects. For example, it can search CCTV for the blue jacket or the red car. Biometric analysis consists of the automated recognition of human features through the processing of images and footage obtained by An Garda Síochána in the course of an investigation. It is undertaken to find each instance of an individual in the images or footage captured.

At the heart of the reform proposed in this Bill is the objective of providing the Garda with a tool that will be a crucial aid in investigations that involve the processing of a large volume of data. Officials from my Department have worked very closely with their colleagues from An Garda Síochána to understand what technological advancements are most needed in investigations involving huge amounts of images and footage. The Garda has made it clear that biometric analysis will be particularly helpful in such investigations. It gives the example of investigations into child sexual abuse material and investigations involving public disorder. Biometric analysis will considerably speed up such investigations, thereby assisting victims and bringing criminals to justice more quickly.

I am also aware that Deputies across the House recognise the right to privacy and the importance of data protection in modern society. These are not hollow aspirations but rather are legal requirements in domestic and international law that must be respected. However, these legal requirements do not mean that law enforcement authorities and security services are hamstrung in keeping communities safe and protecting national security when they are faced with a suspect's right to privacy. As we know, no right is absolute; rather, these are rights that can and must be compromised in the pursuit of serious criminals and those who wish to visit violence and disorder upon the community. Privacy cannot be a shield behind which criminals or terrorists may find refuge and evade investigation, arrest or prosecution. I strongly believe that this legislation achieves the delicate balance between respecting personal rights and ensuring the gardaí have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively.

Gardaí should not have their hands tied behind their back when it comes to fighting crime and upholding justice, law and order. We are committed to ensuring that the most advanced technology is made available to them which, subject to safeguards, they are free to utilise.

It is important to recognise that what is termed "biometric analysis" in this Bill is a tool that is being widely used by police services across the EU and UK. There are multiple international databases dedicated to assisting law enforcement agencies in investigations into child sexual abuse that already rely on this technology.

What is being proposed here is not extraordinary in international policing terms. I would argue it is more akin to standard practice policing in the EU. With that assurance, I would like to further reassure Deputies of the safeguards designed to ensure against any form of abuse of this technology. Biometric analysis will only be utilised where it is necessary and proportionate to do so. I have full trust in gardaí in their work to form an opinion as to when this technology will be needed. That opinion will be formed subject to the code of practice that will underpin this legislation. Any use of biometric analysis will be subject to scrutiny by the court which eventually hears any prosecution arising out of the investigation that utilised that technology to gather evidence. The code of practice will be made publicly available and will set out procedures surrounding the use of biometric analysis. It will be drafted by the Garda Commissioner and laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas. Approval for the code is dependent on positive resolutions being passed in these Houses. Human rights and data protection impact assessments will be required as part of the procedure for drafting the code of practice.

The Bill also includes provision for offences around misuse or abuse of biometric analysis. For example, a member of Garda personnel who goes outside of the procedures set out in the code of practice and conceals the results of the use of biometric analysis will be committing an offence. Biometric analysis will only be utilised by gardaí in the context of the investigation of arrestable offences, the protection of the security of the State and for missing persons. It will not be used in the context of more minor offences. I also emphasise to Deputies that there will be no automated decision making on foot of the results of biometric analysis. This technology is only designed to assist trained gardaí who are responsible for coming to a decision on how to utilise the data that has been processed. The Bill will ensure that the oversight provided by a High Court judge for Parts 3 and 6 of the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) Act 2023 is extended to include the provisions of this Bill. A High Court judge will, therefore, report to the Taoiseach on the operation of this Bill on an annual basis. Finally, and most crucially, it should be acknowledged that this Bill is subject to EU law in this area, including the AI Act and the Prüm II Regulation. It is incumbent on the State to transpose all aspects of these laws in the near future. The Bill was drafted with these law to the fore of its considerations and any future work in this area will likewise have to ensure that there is no conflict with EU law.

I will now outline the stated aims of this Government as outlined in the programme for Government because this legislation is being brought forward in the context of commitments therein. The programme for Government states that the Government intends to support the gardaí to use artificial intelligence in criminal investigations subject to clear guidelines and oversight and to deploy facial recognition technology for serious crimes and missing persons, with strict safeguards. This Bill moves to further that stated intention but the Government's work will not end there. This amending Bill makes the first of two planned amendments to the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) Act 2023. This Bill, providing for retrospective biometric analysis, will be followed by another Bill which will provide for retrospective and live biometric identification. Biometric identification is defined in section 6 of this Bill. It consists of the automated recognition of human features in order to identify that person by comparing biometric data of the individual to biometric data stored in a database of individuals. The General Scheme of that Bill is still in development and it would not be appropriate to go into detail here on what it will contain. My intention is to introduce that Bill in the Houses next year.

I want to address the issue of the Garda need for this technology. I do not need to remind Deputies of the vitally important role gardaí play. They are rightly proud of being closely integrated with the communities they serve and of the model of policing by which they keep those communities safe. This Bill seeks to continue down the path of providing gardaí with modern tools to complement that long-established policing model rather than in any way seeking to replace it. This legislation will provide technology that can save Garda personnel from the harrowing task of trawling through child sexual abuse material. I must look out for the welfare of gardaí and Garda staff. Equally, it will finally ensure that gardaí have the tools to examine hundreds of hours of CCTV footage relevant to a murder or public order investigation in minutes rather than individual gardaí, as part of a team, spending weeks poring over that footage. It is my strong view that the powers being afforded to gardaí here are proportionate to the significant challenges they face. I have full confidence that they will make a material difference in assisting gardaí in their vital work and am equally confident that the use of this technology will be necessary and proportionate.

The Bill is divided into nine sections which I will now briefly outline. Sections 1 and 2 contain standard provisions to set out the Title of the Bill, commencement orders and coming into force once enacted, as well as defining key words and phrases. Section 3 amends section 2 of the principal Act. It amends the definition of a code of practice to take into account the new sections being inserted in that Act by this Bill and it also inserts the definition of an arrestable offence. Section 4 amends section 3 of the 2023 Act which relates to orders and regulations made under that Act. Section 6 really is the meat of this legislative provision. It will insert a new Part 6A which contains five sections into the Recording Devices Act, namely sections 43A to 43E. I will go through them now. Section 43A will set out the definitions specific to the new Part, including the definition of biometric analysis. This definition is divided into three parts. The first part would allow for searches of general biometric characteristics, for example, if a description of a suspect from a witness mentioned their hair colour, height, or a distinguishing feature. The second would allow for the automated recognition and categorising of features of unknown individuals. In other words, where an image that is gathered in the course of an investigation can be searched against other images or footage gathered in the course of that same investigation. The third part would also include the automated recognition and categorising of features of an individual in documents obtained by gardaí but this is where the individual’s identity is already known. For example, gardaí may have arrested a person for possession of child sexual abuse material. They may then wish to search that material for instances of the arrested person in order to understand the full extent of their offending. Missing person cases may also involve biometric analysis being used to find instances of that missing person whose identity is known to gardaí. The definition of biometric analysis excludes biometric identification which is the comparison of an image against a database of images for the purpose of ascertaining, or attempting to ascertain, a person’s identity.

Section 43B sets out that the Bill will not apply to certain enactments. This is to ensure that any cooperation internationally where gardaí may have access to databases which utilise facial recognition, is not impacted by the provisions of this Bill. Section 43C provides for the carrying out of biometric analysis on a retrospective basis only. The purposes for which it can be carried out are in the context of an arrestable offence, in the search for missing persons and also for the protection of the security of the State. That is not to say that in every investigation in these areas, gardaí will resort to biometric analysis. Section 43C also provides that it must be necessary and proportionate and will be presumed to be so if in line with this Bill and a code of practice.

The data subjects that can be searched for are included in this section. It is important that we have clarity on who gardaí will be looking for using these tools. These are victims of arrestable offences, missing persons, individuals who are suspected of the commission of an arrestable offence and those who are suspected of being a threat to our national security. Human review of any results is required to ensure the reliability of those results. The Garda Commissioner will also be required to keep a list of how and when biometric analysis has been utilised. Section 43D is a standard processing provision to ensure gardaí can further process the results of any analysis. Section 43E provides for a range of offences specific to the Part.

Section 7 of the Bill amends section 47, which relates to the code of practice provisions in the principal Act. The main purpose of this section is to include provisions which will allow for minor amendments to the code of practice to be made without necessitating a full consultation process under that section. Section 8 will insert Part 8A into the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) Act and sets out that the Garda Commissioner will have to draft a code of practice for Part 6A. The code of practice will be important in setting the procedures under which Garda personnel may carry out biometric analysis. The code will outline requirements in relation to storage, access, retention, deletion of data obtained as a result of the carrying out of biometric analysis. Finally, section 9 ensures that the carrying out of biometric analysis will be overseen by a designated High Court judge.

Before I conclude, I will speak briefly about the amendments I intend to bring on Committee Stage. First, I am reviewing the transitional arrangements in respect of CCTV schemes under section 7 of the 2023 Act. Under that section, only applications authorised can continue in force and applications in-train will have to be resubmitted under the new regime. To ensure applications that are already submitted to the Garda Commissioner under section 38 of the 2005 Act which are not authorised at the time of commencement of Part V of the recording devices Act 2023 will not be required to be resubmitted to the Garda Commissioner once that Part is commenced. I am also reviewing the CCTV and the automated number plate recognition, ANPR, provisions, with a view to determining if certain aspects of CCTV where there is crossover with other parts, such as ANPR, requires amendment.

This is an important piece of legislation in terms of giving greater technological advancement to An Garda Síochána. I saw the need for this legislation a number of months ago when I was in Store Street. This was a period over a year after the Dublin riots, which took place in November 2023. There were a number of members of An Garda Síochána and retired members who had been brought back to slowly go through footage from the Dublin riots for the purpose of trying to figure out whether an individual in one section of video footage was the same as an individual who was subsequently spotted in other footage from a different camera. We need to ensure we are not wasting valuable Garda resources by having them spending hours, days and weeks searching through video data when it can be done much more efficiently through advanced technology.

That is the real benefit of this. We will see more Garda time available. I am also aware that individuals in the House may be concerned about the instance of the use of this facial recognition technology, FRT, or biometric analysis, as it is more scientifically and accurately referred to. It is important to point out nobody will be convicted solely on foot of evidence that is produced from biometric analysis. This is an aid to investigation. It will facilitate the gardaí in identifying victims of crime first of all, whether they are missing persons or children who are victims of sexual abuse, but when it comes to individuals who have perpetrated serious crime, it will enable gardaí to identify whether the person identified in the footage on one street is the individual who is now also identified in footage on another street.

We have to absorb technology. Many years ago in this House, people questioned the reliability of DNA evidence and the potential dangers of relying on DNA evidence. Technology has shown that is not unfounded. Similarly, this will be a valuable tool for the gardaí into the future and I look forward to hearing colleagues speak in respect of it.

I take this opportunity to wish the Ceann Comhairle and all of the staff in the Houses of the Oireachtas, and even the Minister and his staff, a very happy Christmas and all the best for the new year.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an deis labhairt faoin Bhille. Tá buntáistí agus rioscaí ag baint leis an méid atá fógartha. Ní mór dúinn an Bille seo a scrúdú go cúramach. An Garda Síochána has a challenging job to do. That job has been made much more difficult in recent years by the failure to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis. There are simply not enough community gardaí. There are not enough roads policing gardaí. There has been a growing reliance on overtime for the carrying out of routine police work.

This crisis has to be tackled and, as the Minister knows, Sinn Féin has set out proposals on what we believe needs to be done. The Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill, which we are dealing with today, seeks to allow for the use of biometric recognition technologies as a tool to process evidence in serious criminal investigations, matters relating to State security, and for missing persons cases. It differs in a number of aspects from the general scheme, or heads of Bill, which were previously subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. I note that many of the concerns raised during pre-legislative scrutiny do not appear to have been addressed in this Bill.

The short timeframe between publication and the Second Stage debate is not ideal, nor is it ideal to be discussing a Bill with potentially far-reaching repercussions on the last day of the Dáil. It feels like this Bill has been rushed in order to get it to the Dáil before the end of the year.

Already, questions have been raised. One of those is why the Bill refers to "biometric analysis" when what is referred to is essentially what is termed "biometric categorisation" in the AI Act. The lack of any reference to the AI Act also raises concerns.

The Bill is seeking to give gardaí powers to apply an algorithm to any imagery or video footage obtained during investigations in order to find people and categorise them by their biometric data. It will allow gardaí to recognise and categorise the general public based on their biometric data; locate and track unidentified individuals across images or pieces of footage, based again on their biometric data in order to reconstruct their movements; and search for and locate a known person, across multiple images or pieces of footage, based on their biometric data, to determine their whereabouts.

I want to be clear. Sinn Féin believes that biometric recognition technologies have a place in enabling the gardaí to do their jobs, particularly in the investigation of serious crimes but we also believe its introduction has to be approached with real caution. We recognise the potential role that it can play in terms of the increased amount of evidence, including CCTV, which gardaí must go through in the investigation of crimes and the fact that some of this is physically not possible to do manually in the way in which it can be done through this technology.

However, the use of this technology in no way replaces the need to tackle issues with garda numbers I have mentioned and to ensure we have enough gardaí in our communities to keep them safe, build relationships with communities, police our roads and prevent and investigate crime. There needs to be a recognition of the benefits and the risks of enabling the Garda to use biometric recognition technologies. The Dáil must be satisfied in terms of the limitations and safeguards that are put in place regarding how this technology is used. It is right that it is only used where it is necessary and proportionate. It is important that this is done in a manner that does not lead to excessive surveillance and undermining the right to privacy. We just do not want to drift into a surveillance society.

Reviews have to examine the deployment and the accuracy of the technology. Roll out across the State should only follow a pilot phase that examines issues in relation to accuracy, which is very important, but also the impact on the right to privacy. There are risks inherent in giving gardaí additional powers in relation to these kinds of technologies.

In June 2024, as the Minister will know, a subgroup of the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, AIAC, on biometrics in the public service in Ireland issued an advice paper to Government on FRT use by An Garda Síochána. The AIAC noted that when used in a law enforcement context, facial recognition technology is a high-risk technology given the potential consequences of its use for individuals. It recommended that “given the limitations of current evaluations, the AIAC advises against procuring or deploying FRT until satisfactory independent evaluations are conducted under real-world conditions relevant to Irish law enforcement."

It is not clear to me reading this Bill that the Minister has taken on board those important points made the by AI Advisory Council in relation to the use of these technologies by the gardaí, particularly in cases where it is to be used and the safeguards around approval for deployment. While the Bill sets out the broad parameters for the introduction of a code of practice, it would be much more preferable if the specifics parameters, in terms of the use of the technology, were contained within the Bill. That would allow us the opportunity to scrutinise them to ensure they are sufficiently robust to protect the rights to privacy and to protect against misuse.

I do not know if the Minister will have an opportunity to answer at the end but I will put a number of questions to him. What is the reason for referring to this process as “biometric analysis” instead of what is called “biometric categorisation” in the AI Act? Why is there no reference to the AI Act? What are the specific circumstances when this categorisation will take place and when the individual will be tracked? How will An Garda Síochána mitigate the risks of discrimination, profiling or rights violations that has been shown to arise in other states from the use of these technologies? Of course, the public will also need assurances around any companies providing services in respect of these technologies and the protection of data when using private companies. There needs to be an absolute guarantee that the State will not be using the services of Israeli-based companies for the provision of these services. I would go as far as to say any existing contracts that An Garda Síochána has with Israeli companies providing surveillance technology should be terminated.

We also know that a significant number - albeit a minority - of gardaí faced disciplinary procedures for the misuse of the PULSE system in the past, including the horrendous case in which a former garda was jailed in July for inciting strangers to rape a colleague. That individual pleaded guilty to the unauthorised disclosure of Garda PULSE personal data on 14 individuals. While it is important to say that these misuses related to a very small minority within An Garda Síochána, the experience of that misuse of PULSE reinforces the need to ensure proper protections are in place to ensure these technologies are only used where appropriate, properly authorised and necessary for the investigation of serious crimes.

With regard to the provisions in the Bill on the carrying out of biometric analysis by Garda personnel, there needs to be a strengthening of the provisions that authorise the use of the result of biometric analysis. Section 6 of Part 2 currently states that: "The results of biometric analysis shall not be used by An Garda Síochána for a principal purpose unless...results have been reviewed by a member of Garda personnel and have been ascertained by him or her to be of sufficient reliability to be so used." I argue that provisions as to who authorises the use of the technology should be strengthened to reflect the reality of its use. We will be engaging with this process through further Stages of its passage. We look forward to its passage, if its passage comes anytime in the short term. While this Bill was published by the Minister just a week ago, it is the fourth Bill he has published since he has taken office. A lot of people would be surprised by that because virtually every time the Minister gets out of bed it seems he is announcing new legislation. Quite a number of people would be surprised to learn that, in the course of 2025, not a single piece of justice legislation has passed through the Houses.

That is wrong.

Which legislation is the Minister referring to?

The Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025.

Okay. The one that is closest to passage at the moment is the Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024, which the Minister does not agree with. There are over 30 justice and migration Bills on the legislative schedule. Announcements of Bills, as I said, are being made every other week but we have not got beyond the announcements, soundbites and press conferences to see real action in terms of legislative changes.

In this final day before we break for the Christmas recess, I wish to say to the Minister that we are up for working with him to bring forward the type of changes that are required to ensure we have a policing system that works and serves our communities and a migration system that works and serves our society. We need to stop the play-acting and press conferences and move towards real action.

Tá sé go maith go bhfuil an deis againn labhairt faoin Bhille ar an gCéim seo. Ar an Dara Céim, bíonn sé tábhachtach cloisteáil go díreach cad atá an tAire ag iarraidh a dhéanamh leis an reachtaíocht. Cheana féin, tá sé tar éis a rá go mbeidh leasuithe ag teacht chun cinn. Tá sé go maith go bhfuil sé sin mar chuid den phróiseas, ach tá sé ait go bhfuil sé ag fógairt leasuithe agus muid díreach ar an gCéim seo. Tá sé go maith go bhfuil sé fós ag plé leis an gcoincheap i gcoitinne agus leis na fadhbanna atá aitheanta ag An Garda Síochána, acu siúd atá gafa le cearta daonna agus ag na daoine sa Seomra seo a bheidh ag ardú ceisteanna ina leith seo.

Tá súil agam, nuair a shroicheann muid Céim an Choiste, go mbeidh níos mó leasuithe ag teacht uainn agus ó dhaoine eile le go ndéanfaidh muid cinnte má tá muid ag dul sa treo seo - tá an cuma air go bhfuil - go mbeidh pé reachtaíocht a bheidh againn foirfe, go mbeidh cosaintí ó thaobh cearta daonna de ann, agus nach mbeidh creimeadh a dhéanamh ar na cearta atá ann cheana féin. Tá muid i ndomhan iomlán difriúil ag an stad seo ná mar a bhí 20 nó 50 bliain ó shín. Ní raibh daoine ag smaoineamh ar a leithéid seo, ach amháin na daoine a bhí i roinnt de na tíortha a bhí faoi dheachtóireacht timpeall an domhain. Is ceart go n-úsáideann muid na huirlisí atá ar fáil sa domhan inniu le déanamh cinnte de go mbeidh siad siúd, atá gafa le coiriúlacht nó tar éis ionsaithe a dhéanamh ar an bpobal, gafa agus tógtha os comhair na cúirte.

Sa chás sin, caithfear a chinntiú nach mbeimid ag dul sa treo is atá roinnt tíortha timpeall an domhain atá ag úsáid mass surveillance nó global surveillance of the society, áiteanna ina bhfuil an t-eolas sin ar fad á choigilt agus á úsáid de shíor. Feicim go bhfuil forálacha anseo a dhéanann iarracht cosaint a dhéanamh air sin. Impím ar an Aire a chinntiú leis an code of practice atá luaite nach n-úsáidfear ar an dóigh seo é agus, má tá aon tochailt déanta ar na data sets atá ag An Garda Síochána, nó a bhfuil teacht aige orthu, go scriosfar iad chomh luath agus is féidir ina dhiaidh sin, go háirithe nuair nach mbíonn aon toradh ar an tochailt sin.

Luaigh an Teachta Carthy roinnt de na ceisteanna a raibh mé chun labhairt fúthu, ach tá ceisteanna eile ann. Cad iad na data sets? Dar ndóigh, tá sé éasca ceann de na cinn móra a aithint a bheidh An Garda Síochána ag úsáid, is é sin, na ceamaraí CCTV atá timpeall na cathrach seo. Níl siad i ngach uile áit, rud atá go maith i slí amháin ionas nach bhfuil muid ag dul síos an bhealaigh sin. Chomh maith leis sin, is iad na bodycams sampla eile den trealamh a bheidh á úsáid. Tá siad á dtriail timpeall na cathrach faoi láthair. Is gnáthnós iad sa phóilíneacht sa 21ú haois.

Tá cinn eile nach bhfuil ann, áfach. D’ardaigh mé an cheist seo cúpla uair leis an Aire reatha agus leis an Aire roimhe. Cén fáth nach bhfuil dashcams i ngluaisteáin de chuid An Garda Síochána? Cloistear go rialta go mbíonn An Garda Síochána ag lorg dashcam footage ón phobal, ach níl ceamaraí sna gluaisteáin atá ag an bhfórsa. Go minic, bíonn gardaí ag dul go dtí áiteanna ina bhfuil coireanna ag tarlú nó bíonn siad sa tóir ar dhaoine. Sa chomhthéacs sin, bheadh na ceamaraí sin ina gcosaint do ghardaí agus don phobal i gcoitinne. Arís, deirim sin i comhthéacs ina bhfuiltear ag cloí leis na rialacha ó thaobh an eolais seo a choigilt i gceart le déanamh cinnte nach bhfuil aon seans ann go dtarlódh data breach, cosúil le hOifig an Ombudsman inné ag rá go raibh an cuma air go raibh data breach ann. Tá sé sin ar cheann de na rudaí a mbíonn eagla ar dhaoine faoi, is é sin, go bhfuil an seans ann, má tá aon eagras Stáit nó aon eagras in aon chor ag coigilt na sonraí pearsanta nó íomhánna atá acu, go ndéanfaidh dreamanna, nach bhfuil aon bhaint acu leis an ábhar, iarracht an t-eolas sin a bhailiú agus a úsáid go mí-ionraic. Dá réir, ba chóir dúinn a bheith cinnte nach bhfuil teacht ag an bpobal nó aon duine eile ar a leithéid.

Tuigim an fáth a bhfuil muid ag dul sa treo seo agus tá súil agam go mbeidh seans againn leasuithe a chur le linn Chéim an Choiste.

I also take this opportunity to thank the Ceann Comhairle, her staff and the entire staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas. At this time, I usually apologise sometimes for the nuisance that I cause. Deputy Carthy has requested that I do that.

He is apologising in advance for next year as well.

That is it. I am getting it out of the way early. Nollaig shona agus athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh go léir. I hope it is an incredibly peaceful and safe time for everyone because we have seen far too much tragedy in the last while.

Deputy Carthy dealt with a significant amount of the issues relating to this Bill. Some of those issues were brought up during pre-legislative scrutiny. Obviously, this is about that period where we question when it is biometric recognition and biometric categorisation. In the world we now live in, there are particular issues with regard to artificial intelligence. Even the bodies the State has put forward have spoken on the particular issues they see. We all want to see the gardaí given the tools, resources and numbers they require, which is an issue due to the abject failure of the Government in that regard. We want to ensure we can deal with all the new-found difficulties that exist in this world. It was put very well in the sense that we need to make sure that we do not drift into a surveillance society and that we protect, where we can, people's information and data. It is absolutely necessary to have an element of trialling of such technologies.

There is a particular worry when we are dealing with technology and particularly if we are talking about the use of third-party companies. It is about value for money, but it is also about ensuring data is secure and that we do not have people profiting above and beyond what is acceptable. I do not think that is any way acceptable. The point has been made in relation to surveillance technology and the huge number of companies that would be engaged in what we can only have called, because that is what it was, a genocide in Gaza. We need to ensure we have no truck and no connection whatsoever with companies such as that. That would be particularly unacceptable for the Garda. It would not be okay to use the resources and tools of those who are involved in absolutely heinous crimes as we try to deal with criminal issues here.

I rarely do not bring up that wider issue when I am dealing with justice. I have had the conversation with the Minister before that we are in a very different world and that there are huge risks. It does not matter what committee I am on, whether it is the Joint Committee on Children and Equality dealing directly with the Garda, the Joint Committee on Disability Matters or the Joint Committee on Drugs Use, which Deputy Gannon chairs. The fact is that the only thing people talk about when they are talking about best practice are resources and funding, but they particularly talk about inter-agency action.

I did welcome some of the idea behind the community safety partnerships. We need to see them up and running. I do not think there is anyone who is particularly happy that TDs are not involved in relation to it, but I get the idea that it is above and beyond policing and it is about involving all the agencies. It is about involving the entire State apparatus. It is about involving the community voluntary sector and youth justice projects. It is about ensuring that there is a holistic, comprehensive means of dealing with the issues that are out there. I have said before that we have to look at the powers the Garda and local authorities have and the resources and powers Tusla and others have. We are talking about the early interventions that are needed within families to give that support.

We know that for an awful lot of the issues we are dealing with, whether we are talking about drugs, crime, organised crime and even sometimes disorganised crime, obviously inequality and poverty is at the root. We need to find a way and means of dealing with that, but we also need to find a way and means of dealing with those who have their foot on the neck of our communities, whether we are talking about drug debt intimidation or those who are running teenagers as drug mules and other such things. We have to have a real conversation on the resources and what is required.

In the spirit of this being the last sitting day before Christmas, I want to say happy Christmas and thank you to the Ceann Comhairle and my colleagues in opposition and in government. It is a privilege to have served my first year as a TD for Dublin South-West and to work with Deputies on all sides of the House in trying to bring about a better Ireland. I know everyone here is doing it in good faith. It is a privilege to be a part of it. Happy Christmas to everyone.

We in the Labour Party have a proud record of supporting An Garda Síochána to do the vital job of keeping our communities safe. Each and every day, front-line gardaí put themselves at risk carrying out the difficult job of patrolling our streets, protecting our public and regularly facing scenes of the most traumatic and difficult nature. Supporting our gardaí in the difficult work of policing cannot just take the shape of nice words, however. It needs to mean giving them the resources, training and support they need to do the job effectively and safely. That means equipping them with the technology and powers they need. However, we must always be conscious of the risks inherent in any expansion of police powers and must work to carefully mitigate, balance and safeguard these against the risks.

The Labour Party does not oppose new, useful technologies where they can play an important role. It is important, after all, that our policing moves with the times and is equipped to respond to new threats and do so in an efficient manner. We supported the introduction of Garda bodycams through the previous recording devices Bill in 2023 on that basis. Where proper safeguards are in place, when biases are mitigated and clear guidance is given, new technologies can, of course, help An Garda Síochána, which is all too often under-resourced and neglected, to do its vital work.

However, the Labour Party has also been clear about where we must draw the line. We were elected at the last general election on a manifesto that was against the widespread use of facial recognition technology due to serious concerns about the privacy, trust and data protection issues arising from mass surveillance. From the off, we should be clear about what this Bill does and does not do. It would allow An Garda Síochána to carry out biometric analysis, subject to a code of practice to be drawn up by the Garda Commissioner and laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. This would involve the automated retrospective searching of documents, footage and images that the Garda has obtained in the course of an investigation to categorise or sort the material based on recognisable human characteristics. We are told this will only be permitted in cases of an arrestable offence punishable by five years or more imprisonment, missing persons cases or for the protection of national security. This legislation does not allow for live facial recognition or for identification by comparison to a database of biometric data.

On the face of it, therefore, the proposals made in this Bill are reasonably limited in scope. If they are treated with the care the risks here deserve and if they are accompanied by full and proper safeguards and wide consultation on the code of practice, they should not in and of themselves be a huge cause for concern. However, the Government and the Minister have made it clear that they intend this to be just the start. In July of this year, the Minister stated that this first Bill would be followed by "a second piece of legislation that will provide for retrospective and potentially live biometric identification and analysis beyond what is contained in the original Bill." The Minister confirmed his intention to do this earlier today. I was listening to the debate. This raises several issues.

First and most importantly, the Government needs to come clean and spell out exactly why the measures in this Bill will not be sufficient. Why does it need to go further with measures that have been shown in other jurisdictions to be deeply flawed and risky? What is the use-case for live facial recognition technology, FRT? Does the Minister intend to develop a national database of faces? Live FRT has serious implications for the right to privacy and the right to protest, and there is also the fact that it is discriminatory in who it targets and isolates. Furthermore, why is the Government taking a piecemeal approach here? Muddying the waters like this risks confusing the debate and hampering scrutiny of this Bill. It is very difficult to have a fulsome discussion of this Bill and its relatively limited provisions with the spectre of far more sweeping changes looming. There is a real risk of function creep inherent in any expansion of police powers and that risk was raised during pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. A pattern can often be observed whereby a system is introduced for one purpose but over time, it extends to additional purposes beyond the original intent. The Minister's stated intention to bring forward greater powers in later legislation is in and of itself a brazen attempt at scope creep and it makes it very hard to assess this Bill on its own merits.

The many issues with live FRT for policing are well-documented. Some jurisdictions in the US, including Boston and San Francisco, have banned the use of live FRT technology by their police forces. In both of those cases, the city councils moved pre-emptively to put a ban in place before the technology was used by the police in their cities. They took that action because they were aware of the risks inherent in the technology, particularly the risks of making high-stakes errors along racial lines. They knew that using Al systems that have been trained on predominantly white faces makes the risks of misidentification for ethnic minorities unacceptably high. The Boston ban followed a 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, study that found an error rate of 35% for darker skinned women. Of course, technology has advanced significantly since 2018, but the experience of facial recognition in the UK shows that the same issues have persisted. Police forces in the UK have used facial recognition since 2017. They have used it for varied purposes including finding suspects of serious crimes, locating missing persons and event monitoring. They have made much use of both live facial recognition and database-driven retrospective scanning where officers run images of suspects through police, passport or immigration databases to match an identity. In the UK, the police themselves have pushed for the use of these technologies saying they are essential for effective crime fighting and to protect national security. The largest UK police force, the Metropolitan Police, has reportedly made 1,300 arrests using the technology since 2023. The widespread use of live FRT has been criticised by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, which said that the way the technology is being deployed by the Met is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights protections for the right to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association.

Just this month, a review of the use of facial recognition technology by the UK's Association of Police and Crime Commissioners found a significant "in-built bias". Its review found that "in some circumstances, it is more likely to incorrectly match black and Asian people than their white counterparts" and concluded that the technology had been deployed "without adequate safeguards".

Black subjects were significantly more likely to be falsely identified by the technology, with a rate of 5.5% false positives, versus just 0.04% false positives for white subjects. Significantly, that study referred to retrospective rather than live facial recognition. That shows that the high-risk nature of this tech is not limited to live FRT. The system that was examined was based within the UK’s national police database.

It is welcome that the Bill reflects the recommendation of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration pre-legislative report that greater clarity was needed on the use of databases. The general scheme of the Bill had been drafted in a way that would allow for comparison to databases, but the joint committee was told by the Garda Commissioner that it was not the intention of An Garda Síochána to run images against a database. The Bill now before us is clearer in making a distinction between biometric analysis, allowed under the Bill, and biometric identification based on databases, which is not allowed. That is welcome. However, he EU’s Prüm II Regulation on police co-operation has been in force since March 2024. That regulation requires member states to establish a national database of the facial images of suspects, convicted persons and, potentially, victims. It also requires the automated searching of facial images between member states. While this legislation does not contain any provision for the establishment of a national database of facial images, it seems clear that this may be coming down the tracks. I would ask the Minister to clarify the Government's intentions on this. Will the Minister be bringing forward proposals for a national database of facial images at some point? If that is the case how will such a database interact with the provisions of this Bill? How will the Minister guard against scope creep if the very limited uses permitted here come up against the temptations of a national database? It is worth noting the words of the Al advisory council in June 2024. It acknowledged that FRT software could significantly speed up investigations and allow for analyses that were previously impossible but it also urged caution, stating:

When used in law enforcement, potential efficiency gains must be balanced against the impact on rights. A complex range of harms may potentially occur in deploying FRT including misidentifying crime suspects. Therefore, as recognised in the AI Act, used in a law enforcement context, FRT is a high-risk technology given the potential consequences of its use for individuals.

"High-risk" is precisely the term here. Even if error rates in a technology are low, the consequences of an incorrect decision in the criminal justice system are potentially dire. The Government risks playing with fire if it pushes ahead with any plans for a more expansive use of FRT than provided for in the Bill.

By August next year, the EU Al Act is scheduled to come fully into force. Article 5 of that Act prohibits the use of live FRT, or real-time remote biometric identification, RBI, except if used by law enforcement for the targeted search for victims of specific crimes or missing persons, the prevention of a threat to life or a terrorist attack or the identification of a person suspected of having committed a criminal offence. This might be a welcome recognition from the EU of the risks in this area, but it still leaves fairly wide scope for the use of live FRT by police forces. It will fall to this House then to guard against any overreach. The Minister, therefore, needs to give us clarity on what exactly his intentions are in this area, beyond this Bill.

In any public-facing technology it is essential that public trust is maintained through transparency, accountability and clarity. The Government has recognised this through the seven core principles in the Guidelines for the Responsible Use of Al in the Public Service. Those principles must be at the heart of the code of practice to follow this Bill. Moreover, in the same spirit of transparency and clarity, the Minister must be straight with us on what the Government's future intentions are in this area. A gradual creep of functions and uses will serve only to undermine trust in this technology and even in the institution of An Garda Síochána.

Perhaps this is a good moment to appeal to the Government to finally address the plethora of other long-standing issues with An Garda Síochána. Recruitment and retention in the service has become a crisis. Morale remains at an all-time low. We need a sustainable police force to serve communities around this country. Garda leadership have made clear they want the measures contained in this Bill, and an argument can certainly be made that they will help to solve serious crime or to locate missing persons but they will do nothing to put more gardaí on the streets in our communities or to give hard working gardaí on the front line the conditions or pay they deserve. The Government can claim to be on the side of law and order, by expanding policing powers but it is beyond time that the Government finally took the crises facing our Garda seriously and addressed them. Limited retrospective facial recognition, based on existing records not databases, is one thing but live facial recognition or retrospective analysis based on large-scale databases is quite another. The Government must tread very carefully, it must pay heed to the many international examples where this has gone wrong, and it must be honest with the public about its intentions. Our front-line gardaí rely on public trust, and they deserve the support of the Government in maintaining that trust.

I have a Topical Issue matter later so I am not being the Grinch if I do not say happy Christmas to everyone. It would feel a bit silly to do it twice.

I absolutely agree with the Minister who has said many times that gardaí need to be properly equipped and need adequate resources. We need them to be adequately equipped and resourced so they can do the very important work we need them to do. As was outlined, we are not opposed to the use of this technology per se or to the use of bodycams but it has to be in the right context and it has to be with an eye at all times to the potential human rights concerns the Minister is more than well aware of. They cause concerns and cause them in some communities more than others. We know this. Deputy Ward has outlined some of those concerns. When I spoke on this matter in the House previously I drew the Minister's attention to the Irish Network Against Racism study that had been published at the time. It found: "...survey participants described traumatic experiences while being stopped by members of the Garda Síochána, including strip searches, property damage, and wrongful arrests, some of which had long-lasting psychological impacts."

Rural and Dublin-based groups spoke of concerns about racial profiling and disproportionate stopping of young black men by police. Both groups shared examples. The Minister will know the report, which shared a lot of examples. Every single word of this report is echoed by the experience and evidence from my constituency. I put on record, as I did at that time, my commendation of those members of An Garda Síochána who are putting their hearts and souls into community policing and really trying to get this right.

There are some members, plenty of them, who go above and beyond, but the report tells us there is a problem. There are already concerns about racial profiling right here right now and those concerns have been outlined, but this could potentially be made much worse, as suggested by international evidence, by the use of recording devices by An Garda Síochána. There is a real need to be cautious and to listen to evidence because the Minister's direction of travel is clear. Whether he says it outright or not, it can be seen what way he intends to bring this. Therefore, I urge him to be very cautious and listen carefully to the concerns of such organisations as the Irish Network Against Racism, INAR, and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL. They have seen and know, from international examples, the potential pitfalls and we need to be careful and aware of those.

I have spoken to constituents about this, because people have questions and will ask about the body cameras and what it means. I will tell the Minister straight. There are concerns. People have approached me and expressed concerns about the international experience. It does not mean, because people got it wrong internationally, that we necessarily have to get it wrong nationally, but people are very concerned. They also worry that this is intended by the Government as some sort of distraction, that people should look over there and forget that out of the most recent recruitment to An Garda Síochána, north County Dublin got one additional garda. They worry I am being told to look at the body cameras and not at the fact that my area is about 40 gardaí down from the number it had in 2020, while the population has increased.

I have written to the Minister about this in the past and I will write to him again. I will take Rush as an example. The Garda station there was closed. Since then, the population has risen by 20%. The Garda station is now open for two hours per week. It is not adequate and no amount of technology will make up for the front-line policing that is necessary.

Before I begin, I wish the Ceann Comhairle and her team a happy Christmas and a wonderful 2026 and the same to the Minister and the staff across the Oireachtas, who do such a brilliant job.

I was not a member of the justice committee during the pre-legislative scrutiny that took place last year on the An Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill, but I have taken the time to examine it carefully, to read the report and compare it directly with what is now before the House. On the basis of that research, one thing is absolutely clear. The new and - let us be clear - intrusive elements of this Bill have not been subjected to proper scrutiny at all. That is what this is about.

In the Minister's opening statement, he gave a very reasonable analysis of supporting gardaí and giving them additional powers to do their work and it is hard to argue against that. However, we are asking that the Minister give us the power to do our work, proper pre-legislative scrutiny, time for reflection, proper consideration across committees. That has not been done to this point. The pre-legislative scrutiny that took place in 2024 focused on facial recognition technology, specifically the identification of individuals by matching images of people against databases of known individuals. That is what the committee examined, what stakeholders were invited to comment on and what TDs were asked at that point to grapple with. It did not examine, because they had not been included, the new biometric analysis powers that are contained in this Bill. Those new elements are not minor, technical changes. They are a very significant expansion of State surveillance powers.

Some of the items included in the Bill are the automated categorisation of people based on biometric data, the tracking of individuals across multiple images or video feeds, the ability to reconstruct people's movements based solely on how they look or move using algorithmic analysis and the use of AI systems to single people out in footage, even when their identity is unknown. Those are not cosmetic additions or the tidying up of drafting; they are new powers and they were never examined at pre-legislative scrutiny stage. Yet, here we are on Second Stage being asked to debate the principle of this Bill as though that scrutiny had taken place when it simply did not.

That is not even close to good enough, nor is it an isolated incident in the area of justice over the past year. It has very much become a pattern. We saw it with the international protection Bill where legislation with profound implications for people's rights, legal safeguards and access to justice was pushed through at a pace, only for serious concerns to be raised repeatedly about its alignment with European law and fundamental rights standards. We were told then, as we are being told now, that urgency justified the shortcuts, that operational necessity outweighed the need for careful scrutiny, that safeguards could be dealt with later. Now with this Bill, we are seeing the very same approach again. Once more, we are being asked to legislate first and interrogate later and told that this will all be sorted out in codes of practice we have not seen. Once more, the detail, the safeguards, the limits and definitions are being deferred. This is not how good law is made.

We have to be honest about how this Bill sits in the European context. The EU artificial intelligence, AI, Act is clear about biometric categorisation. It distinguishes between uses that are outright prohibited and uses that are permitted but classified as high risk, requiring stringent safeguards. It explicitly prohibits the use of biometric systems to infer sensitive personal characteristics. It warns about discrimination, profiling and disproportionate impacts on marginalised communities. That has been well interrogated by previous speakers. However, this Bill avoids the language of biometric categorisation altogether. It introduces the concept of biometric analysis without clearly defining its scope and fails to set out how these powers will be aligned with the EU AI Act's protections and obligations. This is eerily familiar to anyone who followed the international protection Bill pre-legislative scrutiny. That legislation had to be repeatedly defended by the Minister against claims that it did not properly align with European safeguards. We are once again legislating at the edge of compliance and trusting problems can be resolved later.

People in this country absolutely want safer communities. We want to protect our gardaí and give them the powers they need. We want to see crime addressed and we all absolutely understand that. We empathise with it and share it. Communities living with antisocial behaviour, organised crime, intimidation and violence deserve action, not just rhetoric. We deserve more than bad law and bad scrutiny. Doing this properly should not be seen as optional. It is not an obstacle to safety. It is a prerequisite of it. Rushed legislation, weak safeguards and poorly scrutinised powers do not make communities safer in the long run. They undermine trust, expose the State to legal challenge and disproportionately impact people who already experience over-policing and under-protection. We have seen this before and we know how it plays out.

I do not accept the idea that it is somehow inevitable that protecting human rights must come at the expense of public safety. That is a false choice. We can have strong Garda powers, meaningful accountability, clear legal thresholds, alignment with European law and public confidence, but we can only get there if we do the work. Frankly, it is not that hard to get this right. It requires a proper pre-legislative scrutiny of the new powers, clarity about what technologies are being authorised, transparency about how decisions are made and real safeguards against discrimination and misuse.

What concerns me most is not just what is in the Bill, but how we arrived here. If justice legislation is repeatedly rushed, term after term, without full scrutiny, we will look back in years to come and ask ourselves how glaring gaps were allowed to pass unnoticed. We will ask how powers affecting rights were normalised without debate and how trust was eroded so quietly. No one in this House wants to see victims of crime let down, nor do we want to slow down legislation for the sake of it, but the way to honour victims is not through legislation that creates new risks while we do the minimum to address the structural causes of harm. I do not believe that surveillance powers introduced without scrutiny will deliver the safety people are crying out for or that legislation which risks discrimination, profiling and legal challenge will stand the test of time.

These are not just risks. They have been documented already in other jurisdictions. Clearly, we can do better. We can legislate in ways that protects communities, supports gardaí, respects rights and aligns with European safeguards, but only if we stop treating scrutiny as an inconvenience and democracy as something to be rushed passed. For those reasons, I have very serious concerns about this Bill, not just in substance, but in process. I urge the Government to pause and reflect and allow this House to do its job properly before yet another justice Bill is passed with holes we will later regret.

The Minister said we have to absorb technology. Nobody is disputing that. The process, however, requires time, engagement and the respect of parliamentarians to do our job on Committee Stage to scrutinise the legislation, make suggestions and see where there might be holes in it and to engage with stakeholders on the type of Bills that are coming before us now. That has not happened and we are engaged on what the contents are of the Bill that the Minister is asking us to speak on today.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish everybody in Dáil Éireann a Happy Christmas and I would like to single out two people in particular, Karen Hinkson-Deeney and Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich, who are my team and without whom I could not have had this first year as a TD. I want to build on Deputy Gannon's points around this particular technology, which I have huge concerns with. Some of the key points I want to make are around the high-risk use of AI and the fact the appropriate safeguards are not yet in place; and around the civil liberties that are at risk when essentially, we are seeking convenience for law and order while potentially weakening our justice system. I have concerns about this legislation being introduced in advance of the EU AI Act coming into effect and, finally, as many others have done, I want to touch on the point that this technology is not infallible and we are not yet ready to deal with those errors.

First, this is a high-risk use of AI and those appropriate safeguards are not in place to address that risk. The AI advisory council subgroup on facial recognition technology has cited that this technology is high risk and therefore carries massive potential consequences for the individuals it is used on. This Bill, in practice, interferes with the privacy rights of individuals using technology that we do not yet understand without the person affected having necessarily done anything wrong. There is a real and obvious lack of independence to this, which shows that safeguards are, at best, ill-conceived and at worst, I would say, deliberately weak. We have a code of practice that potentially can be amended without consultation based on what the Garda Commissioner and the Minister think count as minor changes. I am afraid you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; we need real, independent oversight of this technology. When we erode civil rights and liberties for convenience, we create a weaker justice system. Our rights as individuals need to be protected in the context of a criminal investigation, not trampled on the minute one goes from being a citizen to being a suspect. This is another example of pushing for adoption of technology first and dealing with the consequences later. The legal and criminal justice systems cannot become the testing ground where we move fast and break things. People's lives, justice for victims, and the assurances of those investigating crimes that they are indeed upholding the law, are all threatened by adopting risky tactics that threaten people's access to justice. The administration of justice is a balance of the rights, not a practice of finding what is most convenient for the State while leaving us vulnerable to unsafe convictions and miscarriages of justice.

Caithfidh muid cearta an ghnáthdhuine a chosaint. Faoin dlí, go dtí go bhfuil duine ciontaithe, is ghnáthdhuine é nó í. Má fhaigheann muid réidh leis sin agus má chaitheann muid cearta daonna sna fátaí lofa ar mhaithe leis an rud is éasca a dhéanamh, ní fiú tada na cearta sin d’aon duine.

I strongly believe this legislation should not be introduced in advance of the EU AI Act coming into effect and this is an area I have done a lot of work on. Something which concerns me in the context of this legislation is that facial recognition and biometric analysis technology is a high-risk use of AI under the EU AI Act and this Act has not yet been fully implemented. Indeed we have a digital omnibus being proposed which will change it before it even comes into effect. Despite this, we have the Government, which is so keen to delay Private Members' Bills, wants to fire ahead with a law that may be rendered unworkable in the space of a year. We cannot say this Bill will uphold human rights and governance when it comes to AI when the bodies responsible for monitoring that are still being set up and designated. It is irresponsible to implement a measure like this in criminal investigations when we do not have the structures to ensure we are protecting people and the integrity of criminal investigations.

This tech is not infallible, as we have heard from so any others today, and we are not yet ready to deal with the biases within these systems. A litany of experts on tech, bias, human rights and on AI have all said time and again that this type of technology is rife with bias, which is hard to identify and even harder to eradicate. A false positive on grainy footage that is then signed off by a person whose analysis will be naturally biased by the machine's result and the fact he or she had already identified them as a potential suspect, is what we are facing here. Dr. Abeba Birhane from the AI advisory council wrote in The Irish Times :

In seeking legislation to allow the use of facial recognition technology in policing, Ireland risks introducing a technology that scientific evidence has demonstrated is ineffective, inherently flawed, opaque and discriminatory.

Ethnic minorities face the sharp end of this bias. They are more likely to be considered a suspect by the Garda anyway, something which under this Bill would strip them of their right to privacy. Research has shown time and again that these machines are less accurate on the faces of ethnic minorities. The risk of racial profiling already exists in our police and FRT will only deepen those biases.

To summarise, I genuinely support the use of technology for An Garda Síochána and I realise that cutting-edge technology needs to be made available for our police service to continue to serve our communities as they do with community policing and with peacekeeping. It cannot be done unless we uphold the appropriate oversight and the human rights and equality standards which we require. I commend the work of the Policing Authority and Fiosrú. I know the Policing Authority has merged with the Garda Inspectorate. They do an incredible job, I believe, of observing these and I hope they will be heavily involved in any continued oversight of the deployment of these new technologies because that is what it required. In my previous role and in my human rights and equality work I learned to understand why this is so important because while I, as an individual - a white, settled, southside Dublin woman - have had only positive interactions with An Garda Síochána over the course of my life when I have had cause to do so, I have learned from direct consultation with people from the Travelling community and people from the black community that their experience with An Garda Síochána is not always the same, sadly. They at times can feel very over-policed and underserved by An Garda Síochána. The difficulty I have with this type of technology is that this will only be amplified by the introduction of things like facial recognition technology, until we have the appropriate safeguards and oversight built into place to allow it to be deployed fairly.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I commend the work of An Garda Síochána. In my district in Dublin West they do incredible work on a daily basis. We saw the difficulties they faced during the disgraceful riots in Dublin and sometimes during those incidents we really see how effective they can be in protecting society. While we welcome the move to introduce the use of body-worn cameras, which is seen as a necessary tool to protect the Garda and the public, we do have concerns around this Bill and particularly around facial recognition technology. There are deep concerns citing potential issues with racial profiling and its problematic implementation in other jurisdictions. We have seen time and again where concerns have been raised where this technology is actually in place. There are huge gaps in the Bill around protection and the use of AI. This is newish technology and the people need to be protected from abuse of this. We know from history that pretty much every police force pushes the boundaries of what is right and what it sees as being in its interests. It is our responsibility to ensure that when facial recognition technology - which is used in conjunction with AI - is used, it is used in an appropriate way and not abused by any sections of the State.

There is a strong need for rigid safeguards to ensure sensitive data is stored securely and not inappropriately shared, referencing past incidents where Garda data handling was an issue. I am deeply concerned about who holds this information and where it is held. We have seen that a lot of these companies are American companies and Israeli companies. The Israelis are embedded in a lot of this AI facial recognition technology. We know what they do with that; they kill Palestinians. They kill them on a daily basis using facial recognition. We know this technology is out there. We know it is being abused by police forces. I am certainly not saying that is what will happen but with the technology and the information they have, what companies will be subcontracted to hold this information? I have huge concerns around that.

Technology can only bring us so far. In my constituency, and I have referenced this before, we recently benefited from a number of new gardaí in our area.

Five gardaí were recently attested and sent to Dublin 15, but we lost four due to promotions. Fair play to them. They got promotions and moved on, but it left us with one garda to cover an area that includes Finglas, Blanchardstown and Cabra. Many years ago, I would say to gardaí that we needed a new Garda station and they would say that we just needed more gardaí. Now they are telling us that not alone do we need more gardaí, we also need a new Garda station because of the size of Dublin West.

In the context of technology, for the past four years I have been asking about drones for the Garda. I have been getting ridiculous answers and contradictory information from both the Department and the Garda. We have that technology, but it is not being used. I will give a simple example. There are huge estates in Dublin 15, and gardaí are still cycling around them on pushbikes. It is ridiculous. Young people are flying along on electric bikes and scooters at 40 km/h and 50 km/h, and gardaí are on pushbikes. The technology is there, but it is not being used.

There is merit in some of the legislation, but Sinn Féin and I have massive concerns about the speed of the roll-out of the Bill. It needs to be slowed down because much more scrutiny is needed.

I am opposed to this legislation on the basis of the potential for it to be used to convict people mistakenly, particularly people of colour, working-class young people and minorities. We have a lot of grounds to say that. The Bill is part of an increasingly repressive turn in policing and follows a pattern that already exists here, in Europe, in the US and in other countries worldwide. We have seen examples of that in relation to the Palestine solidarity movement, with of the use of pepper spray and the way activists have been arrested. The key reason is that there is absolutely no accountability on the part of the Garda. If the Minister is going to tell me that Fiosrú holds gardaí accountable, my answer is that it does not. The potential for this technology to be used against minorities is immense.

I will speak first on the technology and then on the racial aspect. This technology involves the use of AI to scan images or videos of a person. These are then matched with details on a database that can be used to find suspects of a crime or a missing person. The Metropolitan Police has used this technology. According to its statistics, 63.6% of identity checks using the technology were incorrect. In 2023, 65% of all identity checks were incorrect when the technology was used. In some studies, women with coloured skin were 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white males. In the US, Asian and black Americans were 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white Americans. Those are real statistics. They are a cause for concern. There have been seven wrongful arrests in the US as a result of the use of facial recognition technology. That is something fundamental to the system. As we have seen, AI is trained with images of people from the global north, the majority of whom are white. The bias is impossible to take out of the system. We have seen many other examples where AI is male dominated. It follows the cultural practices of the people who control it and those who create it.

The Irish State does not have a good track record with this technology. For example, similar technology is used to scan and verify biometric data on people's public services cards. According to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, one third of applications need to be checked by a human in order to ensure everything is correct.

A key point is that gardaí are systemically biased against minorities. All of the studies carried out have shown this, even those that the Garda has compiled. The Irish Network Against Racism, INAR, report found that 83% of non-white people believed they had been racially profiled. In a 2022 survey,59% of Travellers indicated that they believed they were stopped because of their ethnicity. An internal survey by the Garda found that 100% of the gardaí surveyed had negative views of Travellers and 30% had negative views of black Africans. Is the Minister at all concerned about those figures? Has he ever discussed them with gardaí? He is bringing in this technology knowing that these biases exist. As gardaí are the ones who will be reviewing the results the technology will produce, surely these racist views can come into play.

Beyond anything else, it is debatable whether this technology is even useful for what it is intended to do. It does not dissuade criminality, for example, nor does it put people off carrying out criminal attacks or anything like that. It is a move towards more surveillance by the State.

I want to refer further to the racial aspect of policing and the tools that gardaí already have. We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the killing of George Nkencho, a constituent of mine, by gardaí. George was a young man who lived in the Clonee-Littlepace area, which is very close to where I live. He went to the shops in Hartstown. Something happened there, and there was an altercation with a member of staff. Allegedly, an assault took place, which was terrible and which should not have happened. What should have happened was that George should have been questioned and charged if there was a crime to answer for. He should still be alive today. Instead, he was dead within about 20 minutes. George was the first person of colour killed by An Garda Síochána in Ireland, which is extremely significant. He was also a person with known mental health issues. Gardaí had been to the house in relation to George. There were gardaí present who were well aware of the issues that he had. Fundamentally, what happened was the result of a nervous breakdown, ironically arising from the killing of one of his best friends by racists in Tyrrelstown. Two people from the same football team ended up dead. It is quite unbelievable. If this were fiction, it would be seen to be unbelievable.

Whatever happened that day - and, obviously, somebody has to face up to a crime - those who died should be alive. There is no question about that. The penalty for an assault cannot be death. Gardaí followed George in their car, adding to the distress involved. When they got to his house, the armed unit arrived very quickly. I do not know why the armed unit would be need to arrest a young man on his own doorstep. Why was it necessary to inflame the situation? It was not the local gardaí who were at the forefront.

We keep being told that gardaí are well capable of dealing with mental health issues, but their abilities were certainly not brought into play that day. We are talking now about giving gardaí biometric analysis tools, body cameras, tasers and more rights to use pepper spray, which is in related legislation that will accompany this Bill. What about the actions of gardaí on that particular day? It is alleged in the media that a taser was used on George, yet he was still able to rise up and attack those gardaí.

The key issue is this. Five years on, that family, who lost their son, had to endure a horrific torrent of abuse generated by the far right, which kicked into overdrive when it happened. The abuse happened around Covid, when everybody was online. Within minutes, as is scientifically proven, those involved spread all sorts of lies about George being a criminal, stabbing somebody and attacking them with a machete. The Garda subsequently stated that none of this was true. Not only that, GSOC, as it then was, and the DPP refused to reveal what happened that day. As a result, the family have been left with no answers. They still do not know why George was killed.

The Minister stated previously that gardaí should not operate with their arms tied behind their backs. We also need safeguards for situations where gardaí shoot people.

All of the rules were breached that day on 30 December 2020; of that there is absolutely no question. It is indefensible how the family have been treated. I want to raise police accountability. Of course we need policing. We need a police force that is accountable, democratic and answerable to the communities it serves, including minorities. My party colleague from Dublin West said the Garda is doing a great job in Blanchardstown. Blanchardstown is a very diverse community. I would not have the same confidence at all because there is no democratic forum minorities can feed into. That is something the Nkencho family have called for but is not operating in the area at all. Of course we need a Garda that will respond to calls on gender-based violence, antisocial behaviour and when people are victims of a crime but when gardaí end up killing somebody or carrying out any miscarriage of justice, who holds them to account? If a gang member, a well-known criminal, was killed by anybody else, there would be an investigation and a trial. It seems when a garda kills someone, there is no investigation that everybody can see and ask questions about, is held in full public view and there is no trial. There should be a trial of the gardaí who carried out that killing that day. Why is there a difference applied to gardaí? They should not be beyond any questioning. We still need questions answered about why George Nkencho was killed five years ago. His family deserve that and they should not face the full rigours of the State closing ranks and not being accountable. That garda stayed working for those five years. He was not put on leave - nothing whatsoever - when clearly George should not have been shot twice in the back as he was reaching for his door. Two of the shots were into his back. Was there racism at play that day? We will never know, it seems, unless we have a full, open and independent inquiry. There will be an inquest in the new year. I hope it will lead to the calling of an independent inquiry because it is completely unfair that a family who lost their son get no answers when for anybody else who ends up being killed, there is a trial.

I had not planned on speaking but I was listening to the debate. I would like to be associated with all the wishes of goodwill in relation to this time of year to staff and all our colleagues in the Houses. It has already been iterated that Sinn Féin's position is we are not opposing this Bill but the Minister has already indicated amendments will come. We are discussing a Bill tonight but I presume that Bill will change. I would like to think the Minister will take on board many of the concerns shared by the Opposition and people on the Government benches about this technology. We are opening a door regarding the use of this technology. The concern I have is that once we open this door, it will be very hard to close it. The big question we are asking tonight is where this technology is going to lead us. What will the end result be? The Minister said that the technology the Government intends to provide for this legislation will allow the Garda to process a vast amount of footage and imagery much more efficiently than is currently the case. I do not think any of us have a difficulty with that. The current situation is that if there is a serious crime, people are asked if they have dashcam footage and so on. A point made by Deputy Ó Snodaigh was that it seems strange Joe public is asked. It is a regular thing. If there is a crime on Grafton Street, they will go to the shops there and look at the bank and all places where there is footage. It seems odd that Garda vehicles do not have technology currently. It seems out of sorts. Perhaps that needs to be looked at. Many of my colleagues expressed concerns relating to where the technology has gone wrong. We only have to look across the water to see many of those cases, for example the Jean Charles de Menezes case, a Brazilian who was mistakenly profiled and ended up losing his life. There was talk at that stage of a complete review of the situation, but the man was dead. There was no real recourse for his family in relation to an apology. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and fitted the profile. At the moment, in my constituency, we have CCTV run by the Garda. I have seen the operation. We also have council CCTV. I understand there are challenges in using that under, I think, the planning laws at that time were introduced and it can only be used for certain things. The question a lot of people who attend public meetings have is why that cannot be used or why that camera is broken. There is support in the community to try to track criminality but there are also concerns, as others said, about where this will end up being used. It has also been pointed out about community forums. People are reluctantly supporting this Bill but how it actually unfolds will be important. Amendments will either make or break this Bill in how we go forward.

This is the last time I will speak before Christmas. I wish the Ceann Comhairle, all Members and the staff who work here tirelessly throughout the year a happy Christmas. I thank them on my behalf and on behalf, I would say, of all Members of the Oireachtas for their outstanding work. I also want to thank my officials in the Department of justice for their tireless commitment to providing assistance and help to me as Minister. I will deal with a couple of issues raised by Deputies. I would like to respond to everything Deputies said and I will try. Since Deputy Carthy is here, I will reply to what he said. He at one stage criticised me for not bringing in enough legislation and then criticised me for rushing legislation. I do not intend to rush legislation. I have announced a series of important justice legislative provisions I want to see enacted. This is an important one. There have been a number of contributions from Deputies in respect of the reliability of what is referred to as biometric analysis. We need to be clear there is no investigative tool used by the Garda or any of us in life that is infallible. A garda can be looking for an individual and misidentify another individual as that person. Mistakes can be made consistently. However, we cannot ignore the fact there are technological advancements happening of huge benefit to police services for the purpose of investigating crimes. We have looked very much in this debate at the issue from the point of view of a person sought by An Garda Síochána as having been alleged to have committed an offence. We also need to think of it from the point of view of people who are missing. There are people who are missing and it is a terrible trauma for the families involved. This technology will be of huge assistance in enabling the Garda to check for the purpose of identifying where that person is.

Similarly, a terrible thing happening in the modern world is the misuse of children for child sexual exploitation. It is going to be extremely beneficial for us to use this technology to identify children who are victims of that heinous crime.

I am conscious that much of my work as Minister for justice is devoted to combating domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. If a woman, as it predominantly is, has been raped or seriously sexually assaulted by an individual who is known, there has to be a benefit in having this technology for the purpose of trying to identify where that person is.

A garda standing at the top of Grafton Street who is looking for a suspect could be in the difficult position of trying to deal with everyone walking up and down that street. The garda might have been told to keep an eye out for a suspect and arrest them if they see them. That garda can make a mistake but there is a huge benefit in having this type of technology in that we can use the vast amount of footage available to try to analyse biometrically a lot of data to subsequently identify individuals.

Deputy Carthy asked the reason for using the term "biometric analysis" and not "biometric categorisation". In fairness, biometric categorisation is a subgroup of biometric analysis. Biometric analysis covers elements of a number of key concepts within the AI Act, including biometric categorisation, but should not be limited to that term.

Deputy Carthy and several other colleagues, including Deputy O'Reilly, referred to their concern about racial profiling. Of course, that type of profiling should not be permitted. I assure colleagues that under section 89(3) of the Data Protection Act, profiling is prohibited. That section says that profiling that results in discrimination against an individual on the basis of a special category of personal data shall be prohibited.

Deputy Carthy also referred to the fact that a significant number of members of An Garda Síochána would face disciplinary action for the abuse of PULSE. I do not know if it is correct to say a significant number, but the reason for this in legislation, and the reason there will be codes of practice, is to ensure this technology will be used only for what is lawfully permitted under a code of practice. I suspect most of us in this House use this type of facial recognition technology when we accessing our phones or various services. The fact that we are prepared to rely upon it for these purposes should indicate that it is a technology that is improving in its ability.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Ó Snodaigh freisin. Tá an ceart aige. Dúirt sé go bhfuil a lán ceamaraí CCTV timpeall na cathrach seo agus is féidir leis na gardaí na ceamaraí sin a úsáid agus iad ag déanamh a gcuid oibre. Caitheann na gardaí a lán ama ag scrúdú an footage. Tá an Bille ag freagairt an fhadhb sin. Beidh na gardaí ábalta an footage a scrúdú go tapa nuair a bhíonn siad ag lorg duine amháin sa CCTV. I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for his contribution.

Deputy Ciarán Ahern referred to the fact that he was concerned about the further extension of this legislation. I have been fairly clear – I am not going to be evasive with colleagues – that it is my intention to introduce further legislation next year for the purpose of trying to put on the Statute Book legislation that will permit retrospective biometric identification and also live biometric analysis and identification. It is of benefit to investigations and will assist the public. The reason I am introducing this is not that An Garda Síochána is saying it wants to use it for itself; it is because it is of benefit in ensuring the best policing service is available to individuals.

Deputy Ward made good points. Of course, the technology is not infallible but it is not going to be used as a determinative tool and as determinative evidence meaning a person is going to be convicted of an offence. The worst that could happen is that an individual who is incorrectly identified will be questioned by An Garda Síochána. Every day of the week, people who are completely innocent are questioned by An Garda Síochána in respect of investigations because gardaí may regard them as suspects.

Gardaí are lawfully entitled to question people where they have a reasonable suspicion that they have been involved in an offence. In many cases, it turns out that an individual has no involvement whatsoever and is completely innocent, but that does not undermine what the gardaí are doing.

Deputy O'Reilly also raised human rights concerns. I have concerns about these also but we also have to consider the human rights of victims of crime and the individuals who are entitled to a thorough investigation. It is not a distraction.

The numbers coming into An Garda Síochána are improving. As I said in November, 194 gardaí passed out from Templemore and 200 went in the following Monday. Numbers are looking up. The benefit is more gardaí in every community. An advantage to this legislation is that gardaí will not have to spend days or weeks looking through footage. They will be assisted technologically.

Deputy Gannon spoke about state surveillance powers and expressed concerns about the legislation. With regard to state surveillance, this is not a Big Brother state and it does not have a Big Brother government. Nobody in this House is advocating enormous state surveillance. However, we cannot get away from the fact that, around the place, there is a huge number of CCTV cameras and a large amount of footage available. The latter has become enormously advantageous in investigating criminal offences. Part of the reason certain types of crime are declining is that people who commit criminal acts know they will be apprehended owing to there being very significant CCTV surveillance.

Deputy Gibney also raised concerns in respect of the technology. She said it is not infallible. I agree. Of course it is not. There is no investigative tool used by An Garda Síochána that is infallible.

I listened to Deputies Donnelly and Coppinger. Many Members spoke about studies conducted that indicate the technology is unreliable. Many of these date from 2018 and 2019. The technology has improved immeasurably since then. I believe that any bias that may have existed in terms of race or gender will ultimately be eliminated, but there will always be human verification and human assessment.

I wish the Ceann Comhairle a happy Christmas and thank her for all her work. She was not here when I wished people a happy Christmas at the outset. It has been a very busy year for all of us. I wish all my colleagues, particularly the Ceann Comhairle, a happy Christmas.

I thank the Minister. I will be here for the rest of the evening. I will wish all a happy Christmas before adjourning.