James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the witnesses said that this is an opportunity for Ireland to be an exemplar of best practice by putting in place a robust framework for the use of the technology. To play devil's advocate, would I be right in saying that it could have been introduced without legislating at all and that perhaps this could have been rolled out as a technique within law enforcement without any such legislation being passed and one could take one's chances in the courts to see if it was challenged or would issues arise? I am not necessarily advocating for that approach. When this debate started some time ago, it struck me that another approach might have been to just start doing this because I am not sure if it is illegal even though it is not necessarily legally supported and we do not have a framework so perhaps the witnesses could offer some views on that.