Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The many good legal advisers available to the Deputy will tell him that we have already arrived virtually at that point in regard to established jurisprudence by the courts. I do not want to impose an absolute and inflexible rule where the courts themselves have not gone that far. I appreciate the Deputy's point and have great sympathy with his argument that gardaí should realise there is no point in questioning a detainee who is held for a long period in custody unless the video-recording machine is functional. The Judiciary has also arrived at that general proposition but has not put it in the absolute black and white terms the Deputy proposes. I do not want to take such an approach.

I take the Deputy's point that we must try to establish norms to which people must aspire. In regard to the example I gave, the Deputy might say hard cases make bad law. This may be so. However, we should remember a recent extraordinary case. If anybody had claimed in this House five years ago that a situation could arise where a garda seeking an extension against a person under the Offences against the State Act would be obliged to ask a judge to hurry up and make up his mind because the time was running out, most of us would have considered it highly unlikely. Such scenarios do, however, arise.

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