Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Following on from that, the emergency clause in the 2009 Act, which allows a superior officer rather than a judge to carry out these recording or tracking of people doubled between 2009 and 2010. Will the Minister explain what the hell was going on in that period?

I have a direct question for the Minister. During her tenure or the tenure of Ministers for Justice and Equality in this Government, how many phone and mail surveillance operations were authorised and how many of those were political in nature as opposed criminal? Will she comment on the report from the designated judge for 2016 on all the surveillance operations under both Acts and indicate if they were for political or criminal purposes?

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