Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

IHRC did not engage with the PSNI. I do not know if the other two commissions have. We engaged with the Policing Authority and the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris and raised these concerns. Other witnesses appearing before the committee also spoke about this issue. The Commission on the Administration of Justice did so in February 2022. As yet, that is the evidence we have. It is anecdotal through our civil society representatives such as the commission and the ICCL. The reports we are getting are through them so we do not have any data or evidence. We first engaged with the Policing Authority given that it is the body that holds An Garda Síochána to account and it did so in public meetings. We then followed up with the Garda Commissioner to get more detail on it. According to the letter we received in response, where a vehicle is stopped for the purpose of an immigration check, all passengers are checked for identification sufficient to establish their identity and nationality. The letter stated that in cases where a passenger is identified to be Irish, UK or other EU national, no further action is taken. That is the set policy we have received from An Garda Síochána. This speaks to our broader concerns around the potential for racial profiling from our police service and the lack of disaggregated data gathered by An Garda Síochána, which would allow us to identify that this does not exist. In today's world where we know racial profiling is a symptom of well-meaning police services and police forces across the globe, we should start from the point that there is potential for racial profiling and gather evidence to disprove it. This is only one of the areas in which this is an issue where we engage with An Garda Síochána on the potential for racial profiling. I would add that most of the population has huge respect for our police service, which offers us a great service, particularly through these Covid years, but my direct engagement particularly with ethnic minority groups is that this is not shared with everybody. Some communities feel over-policed and some communities feel they are subject to racial profiling so we need to see better engagement on this and that is my concern.

Regarding the comments about the ETA and the potential for what feels to many like a hard border in everything but name, that is certainly what we heard when we had direct engagement with those Border communities. It was a real eye-opener hearing directly from an excellent speaker from one of the women's networks who talked about how when you are on a border, you already feel pushed towards the margins and anything that really hardens that is going to be hugely impactful on those communities. The Deputy gave us an example there, which is exactly the type of example about which we are concerned, where somebody who at the moment has daily access across the Border will have that access brought into question if every time he or she wishes to cross, he or she would have to fill in an application form to do so. A total of 30,000 journeys are made across the Border every day. It involves things like services, employment, education and simply family visits. At the moment, we have a situation we all enjoy, which means that those communities are not affected by the Border, and we want to ensure as per the commitment in the protocol that this be maintained. I will see if anyone else wants to jump in.