Dáil debates

Thursday, 23 June 2005

Garda Síochána Bill 2004 [Seanad]: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage.

 

6:00 pm

Photo of Michael McDowellMichael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

There would be a consensus on the thinking behind these amendments but the Bill is not the place to insert a wish list of items relating to technology or the like.

To give the House some information on, for instance, Garda communications, when I came into office I was made aware of a project that was being planned to purchase a digital radio system for the Garda Síochána at a cost of €200 million to €300 million. My major concern in regard to any item of that size and significance is whether we would get the right equipment or, having spent the €200 million or €300 million and had the usual overruns, I would be told a week later in the Garda Review that it was a poor system that was not as good as some other I should have purchased elsewhere. The recurring nightmare whenever the public sector and information technology come together is that a massive amount of money will be spent, we will be told it was the wrong purchase and be stuck with the wrong system.

Instead of that the CMOD unit in the Department of Finance is now putting together a package to offer a contract to run a system of digital communication for the Garda Síochána. It will be available also to the other blue light services — ambulance, Civil Defence, the Army and others who want to join in the system — so we will have a digital radio system across the State for State purposes. I am pleased the contracts for that will be going out to tender in January 2006. That is a much better outcome than what was about to happen otherwise and I am enthusiastically promoting it.

We have had pilot programmes on digital radio and we are aware of the issues. It is wrong in this day and age that gardaí are using analogue transmissions which are the subject of scanners by serious criminals. That cannot be stood over. Curiously, it may be that on occasion they would be better off using their digital phones than a radio transmission which is open to scanning. No Minister could stand over that and it is my intention to ensure the Garda Síochána has cutting edge technology available to it because our criminal confraternity is at the cutting edge in using technology for its purposes. It is wrong that the Garda Síochána should be following in the wake of events rather than be at the forefront of technological development.

I take Deputy Costello's point about issues such as forensics. However, while video recording takes place currently in 96% of cases, and a recent Superior Court judgment suggested that failure to record a confessional type statement, save in the most extraordinary circumstances, could have serious implication for those statements — we are moving rapidly to 100% — we should remind ourselves that Parliament passed a law relatively recently requiring judges to warn juries that uncorroborated confessions had to be dealt with with caution. That reinforces Deputy Costello's point that there must be corroboration if we are to have that kind of material. Nowadays, with DNA in particular, low level DNA is left in an extraordinary set of circumstances. If it is used it is very useful for giving the gardaí a clue as to who they are dealing with because it is almost impossible to grip the steering wheel of a car without leaving a trace of DNA behind. Even though in many cases such low level DNA may not prove guilt, it can provide the gardaí with a clue as to who they should be seeking. The question of DNA databanks for convicted criminals also comes into question in that respect. We should give the gardaí every possible technological assistance.

Going back to the Richie Barron death, which was such a terrible event, it beggars belief that there was not either the system or the equipment available to put a tent over the locus in quo where human flesh was found on a roadway in those circumstances. That is an issue which is addressed to some extent in the Criminal Justice Bill — the right to preserve a scene, including on private property. Apart from having legal provision for it, systems training and equipment are also issues. From what I gather from the Sophie Tuscan du Plantier case, and I say this as a layman not as Minister, there was a failure to have adequate protective equipment to preserve the scene long enough for forensic scientists and pathologists to get to it to make their examination. Those are issues on which there is major scope for learning and improvement in practice.

I agree the force must do everything the Deputies opposite spoke about but I do not see any particular reason to start making aspirational provision for it in the Bill. Imagine if the amendment stated the opposite, namely, "In achieving its objectives and performing its functions, the Gardaí shall not have available to it modern and effective communications systems and leading edge technology for the recording of crime and the collation of data". The amendment contains a fairly self-evident proposition that this is a desirable state of affairs.

There are many provisions I would like to include in the Bill such as a provision that every interview should be recorded or that the scene of a crime should never again be left in the state that Mr. Justice Morris found regarding the accident involving Richie Barron. This legislation is not meant to be a series of aspirations or best practice guidelines given by legislators to the gardaí. This is a constitutional framework for the Garda Síochána and it will be in the context of directives, annual policing plans, the professional standards units and the inspectorate that best practice will evolve and that issues of this kind will be brought to the fore rather than by contenting ourselves that we have dealt with the matter because we have put something on the Statute Book.

Whereas I fully accept what Deputy O'Keeffe is trying to achieve in his amendments Nos. 24 and 85, in truth they are better put into practice rather than left on the dusty page of a statute. Putting them in a statute does not advance the issue one way or the other. I ask Deputy O'Keeffe not to press the amendment, having fully accepted the gravamen of what he and Deputy Costello said about the importance of these issues.

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