Mr. Dermot Woods:

The long and the short of it is "No". Part of what guards against that now in the framework of thresholds that has been put in place in the proposal here is that there is in effect a two stage process by which access to traffic and location data will be governed. The first is an application to the Minister in which a reasoned case which satisfies the thresholds must be made. The second is then to access the actual data that has been instructed to be retained in front of a judge and again the thresholds have to be reached to the satisfaction of a judge. The requirements that are set out in the Act in each occasion that the data is to be accessed have to be satisfied and the judge can only then authorise access to it. Subsequent to that, after the fact, there are two layers of further oversight. One is the complaints referee in an individual application and the second is the designated judge who has a general oversight of the Act, including access to individual applications and authorisations.

Coming back to the point of pitching at the threshold of the District Court, that also fits into the Minister's decision to retain the existing oversight arrangements but also to manage the new process of authorisation for access within the current hierarchy that exists between the various judicial levels in the courts.