Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I am sure it is not straightforward and a judgment call would need to be made in certain cases. However, I am at somewhat at a loss to understand how it might alert the criminal as mentioned by the Minister. If these individuals are already under surveillance as he suggested and the Garda is gathering intelligence on them anyway as it ought to be, what more precisely does the Minister mean by saying that it would alert them? Surely they know that the purpose of the Garda is to put them behind bars. I can understand in a particular case why it might betray a wider operation to reveal in court evidence gathered as a result of an interceptor, bugging device or whatever. However, generally I am having some difficulty struggling with the concept of alerting criminals.

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