Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

If there are difficulties in finding a judge out of hours, it is probably a reflection of the fact there are not enough judges in the State, quite simply. We have 3.3 judges per 100,000 of population compared with a European average of 21. The failure of the State to invest in access to justice and to invest sufficiently in the judicial system should not be an excuse to undermine the due process rights of the accused and the general citizen. I stand by my earlier comments and those of other Deputies.

I have a quick question for Mr. Sunderland about the data we are talking about. The debate about extracting disaggregated data such as a person's ethnicity and other demographic data is being made somewhat complex because of the general data protection regulation, GDPR. A lot of the time, people will quote the GDPR erroneously as a reason not to do things instead of engaging with what the regulation states and does not state. I would love to hear from Mr. Sunderland as to whether that is true and the complexity of the situation around disaggregated data arising from the stop and search situations we are talking about. I am thinking not only of ethnicity but also of geographic and socioeconomic data, which are also very important, particularly in relation to certain offences. On what basis would it be unlawful to collect disaggregated data during a stop, search, arrest and detention? Perhaps Mr. Sunderland would speak to that.