Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State suggested in his earlier contribution that if this were to be applied, namely, the substitution of "unlawful acts" with "acts which have been found to by a Court to be unlawful", it would turn everything upside down and the Garda Síochána would not be able to act on the spot. No one is saying that members of An Garda Síochána should not be allowed to act on the spot. It is a matter of whether something is deemed to be an issue of State security. More often than not, decisions that are made are not necessarily made in the heat of the moment. Often such decisions are contemplated in advance. When GSOC, for example, looks for information or wants to check a Garda barracks, the Garda Commissioner is able to say it is a matter of State security and that she cannot let GSOC in to search that barracks. That is not a spur of the moment action; that is contemplated. There have been many instances where decisions could be made by an independent body like the policing authority on whether an issue should be deemed to be a matter of national security. As long as the Government decides what constitutes a matter of State security, we will never be happy with how this is dealt with and we will certainly be pressing our amendments.

See this speech in context