Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This motion will give effect to Irish participation in the European Police College, CEPOL. As well as uncontroversial courses such as language, training and so on, this year CEPOL is holding courses in the following areas: informant handling, undercover operations, radicalisation, social media policing, and the use of passenger name data, etc.. My colleague, Deputy Bríd Smith, will address issues relating to Fortress Europe.

I would like to know more about the aforementioned courses. For example, what is covered in the undercover operations course? Presumably, we will be told it deals with terrorism, etc.. Many undercover operations in Europe are related not to terrorism, but to social campaigns. I wonder if PC Mark Kennedy of the British Metropolitan Police is being asked to speak at the CEPOL training courses this summer. Mr. Kennedy was involved in undercover operations in this State, including at Rossport with the Shell to Sea campaign, the May Day protest and the anti-war campaigns at Shannon Airport. In January 2011, President Michael D. Higgins said: "It is of grave concern. This type of activity undermines respect for the law and it is very sinister in that it can damage good causes." An MIT research scientist, Harry Halpin, who was spied on by PC Kennedy in a different country at a different time said: "What we are seeing globally is the rise of dangerous new authoritarian secret States, whose architecture of oppression is aimed at suppressing social change."

I would like to speak about Operation Mizen and the manner in which the Irish State used the police to monitor the Facebook and other social media pages of anti-water charge activists, as admitted by the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, in the House in October, but I want to allow my colleague, Deputy Bríd Smith, to deal with other issues.

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