Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The difficulty for most people is that expertise is not there. Who would select the panel? How is that decided? Who appoints them? Where is the input on that issue? I appreciate the witnesses have half dealt with the issue. It will be a problematic area.

As regards judicial oversight and adopting the model of some of the procedures under the Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act 1993, we have repeatedly highlighted the deficiencies in that legislation in terms of people not being able to access a complaints procedure because they did not know their communication was intercepted unless they learned of it by accident. There are particular deficiencies in judicial oversight and we gave an example of the judge overseeing the procedure going in and spending half a day covering the Garda, the Defence Forces and the other areas that needed to be checked in terms of whether the legislation was complied with. That is not effective judicial oversight and I am concerned by it.

The officials have said that they are considering reviewing that model and I hope they do so because that will be a problem.

The last issue is the option of being allowed to do it without any judicial oversight at all if the urgency of the situation dictates it. Again, how is urgency being defined here? Where is that quantified? Who determines that the situation does not require judicial oversight? I note that a superior officer has to prepare a report within seven days to explain why it was done without judicial oversight but there needs to be more meat on defining that in its entirety.

In terms of the points made by Deputy Wallace about threats to the State, the argument could be made that individuals are involved in a paramilitary organisation or in criminality and therefore they cannot know that their data is being retained. Surely the point is that gardaí only believe the person is involved in criminality or paramilitary activity but do not know that to be the case. They do not have the evidence to prove it because if they did, they would have brought them before the courts. There is a danger there, in the context of the Special Criminal Court, non-jury courts and so forth of this being done under the auspices of dealing with terrorism but then being used by everyone else. I would still have questions around that.