Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will go back to what Senator Ward said about consultations happening out of earshot of gardaí. I am not sure why that is there. One should be allowed a consultation with a solicitor in a private room if one has been arrested. I would be interested to hear the reasoning for that. Certainly in my time, there were Garda stations, one in particular in Dublin, that routinely would make sure the door of the interview room was open and a Garda member would be sitting down the hall while one was trying to have a conversation in muffled tones with one's client.

The Garda seems to be complaining about the talking-over issue. I am sure that probably relates to a situation in which a solicitor has to remind a client that he or she is not obliged to say anything but anything he or she says will be taken down in writing. That is probably the complaint, unless there is something else. All interviews are video recorded. I would be surprised to see solicitors standing up and doing a song and dance to disrupt the conversation or interview that gardaí are having with the person who has been arrested.

One or two of our guests might already have covered the point about finding a judge late at night, rather than a superintendent. Over the past year, particularly since the beginning of the pandemic, we have moved to a large extent to remote hearings, Zoom meetings and all of that. People are routinely remanded in custody for further periods without attending court and I do not see why that should not be explored before it is brought to a superintendent, or whoever it is, because of the urgency of the situation. Judges are on call, just like superintendents and solicitors, over weekends and during the night. That should be explored before a decision is made to take away the power of the Garda to issue warrants for other gardaí.