Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I wish to pursue a little further with the Taoiseach the extent, or his assessment of the extent, of the terrorist threat or the terrorist related activity within the State. The Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005 allows the Garda to obtain the personal telephone records of persons who are suspects for terrorist offences which carry prison sentences of five years or more. The last year for which figures are available is 2006. According to those figures, 10,000 requests were made by the Garda in 2006 for access to personal telephone records. That is approximately 30 per day, which would suggest that the extent of terrorist related activity is much higher within the State than most of us would have thought. Will the Taoiseach indicate why such a high number of requests were made by the Garda for access to personal telephone records in its investigations on terrorist related activities in 2006?

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