Ms Kate Mulkerrins:

I welcome the opportunity to respond, especially to Mr. Geoghegan's request that we take back the issue of disaggregated data to the Commissioner, as well as Mr. Geoghegan's reference to ethnicity. IHREC, will know, because it is a valued member of our strategic human rights committee, that there have been persistent calls for us to do this. The Commissioner has received our advice in this regard and a report is with him.

The consideration is whether An Garda Síochána should be the collector of those data or the referrer of those data to entities within the State which already hold those data. That would require an action and legislative permission to take a unique identifier which is then transferred. That approach is congruent with Government policy, in that you take such data once but use them often, rather than have An Garda Síochána do it, which is not an expert in the collection of such sensitive data and, more importantly, is not the appropriate body to collect it in the context of such adversarial circumstances as suspects, in particular, and vulnerable persons may find themselves in vis-à-visAn Garda Síochána.

I want to assure this committee the Commissioner has heard loudly and clearly and is absolutely supportive of our need to collect these data, not just, as was said, pursuant to our section 42 responsibilities to ensure non-discrimination, and proactively to seek to do so, but based on empirical data. I wanted to intervene in that regard.

Since I am in, I ask the Chair to indulge me for 30 seconds. I will try to do a tour de forceof a couple of points made. Deputy Daly, on behalf of his constituents, raised the issue of the lack of notice to members of An Garda Síochána of new regulations. I offer my deep sympathies to all of his constituents, but he will be aware the legislative architecture of Covid-19 encompassed five primary Acts and more than 100 statutory instruments, communication of which to An Garda Síochána, almost invariably because of our democratic legislative process, followed only after a late Cabinet meeting on a Friday evening in particular. It came into An Garda Síochána in a form-----