Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

We already have that knowledge. The Government's human rights watchdog has stated that we need to review this. Internationally Ireland is out of kilter. The Minister has repeated that the information cannot be given for security reasons and so on. Even in Britain the report that is published runs to hundreds of pages and details the numbers of operations, the reasons for each operation and even catastrophic failures where mistakes were made. How can we learn if we do not have that information? Even in the United States, the NSA reports for Congress have that type of detail.

The exclusion of ordinary surveillance from any of these Acts needs to be looked at. Who monitors that people could be trailed or have their houses or cars watched? There is none of this and it only applies to devices. The privacy of citizens is really important. This was sparked by the privacy of journalists whose stories were actually invading the privacy of citizens, which is a separate issue. The privacy of people needs to be balanced and protected, but that is for everybody and not just journalists. I appeal to the Minister to include the other Acts and to extend it to the records of citizens and not just journalists.

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