Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

Amendment No. 3 refers to using officers to monitor the movements, activities and communications of a subject in a targeted, ongoing and repeated way. If one were to allow that, in effect, one is extending the definition of surveillance and, therefore, extending the necessity for an authorisation to be gained from a judge in order to allow officers to monitor the movements, activities and communications of a subject in a targeted way. The whole portent of the legislation was to allow the evidence garnered from electronic surveillance devices to be used in evidence. Officers who monitor and survey on a normal policing basis are able to give the evidence in court themselves and be cross-examined. That is the distinction and it is necessary in that the Bill deals with electronic devices and the admissibility of the evidence garnered by such devices as opposed to that garnered in normal day-to-day policing activity in respect of which the gardaí would be questioned in a subsequent trial.

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