Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is a certain irony in the furore in the media and among politicians regarding the issues of phone tapping and surveillance. It is as if this is a big revelation, that nobody knew this was going on and that it is a big surprise. This is not a surprise. Our legislation, passed by Members in this House as recently as 2009 and 2011, allows for lawful surveillance of citizens. I have no doubt the Minister will say that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for that, including counteracting terrorism, serious crime and so forth. We are told that there are safeguards in place to ensure that the privacy and human rights of citizens are protected but myself and Deputy Wallace have pointed out in this House, particularly during the last Dáil but also in this one, on numerous occasions that the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1993, the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act 2009 and the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 are not fit for purpose because they do not balance the rights in that regard. The Minister will say the Defences Forces, An Garda Síochána, the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Justice and Equality can seek to have peoples' phones tapped and to have their records looked at but that there is oversight, that a judge has to look at that at the end of the day. However, as we have pointed out, the judge who compiles that report goes in on one day, asks to see one or two requests out of thousands and then says that he or she was given everything asked for. That is not proper oversight and scrutiny.

A review was initiated last year when the media suddenly woke up to this issue when the phone records of some members of the media were being requested by GSOC. Those people were involved in criminality and GSOC was investigating criminal behaviour on the part of gardaí. That is when the media got interested. When are we going to review the 1993 and the 2009 Acts, which are open to wholesale abuse?

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