Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 13 February 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

General Scheme of the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill: Discussion

Mr. Simon McGarr:

From the point of view of evidence, as Commissioner Harris repeatedly said, we are not discussing the creation of machine-generated outcomes under the Bill. These will all have a human element as regards the decision-making. The issue we are raising is our concern about the quality of the prosecutions and the danger a prosecution might fall on the basis of how the evidence was gathered, which is a ground upon which there have been challenges in the past. We do not need to name the particular cases, but there have been challenges to quite strong prosecutions for very serious crimes on the basis of how the evidence was gathered as opposed to a challenge to the identification outcome.

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