Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amending of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 to ensure compliance with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the area of general and indiscriminate retention of communications data for national security and law enforcement purposes is very important. The people who are charged with dealing with and pursuing serious crime will tell you that the Dwyer case certainly put the cat among the pigeons with regard to their work, their ability to do their work and the results of their work being put to use afterwards in prosecuting a person through the criminal courts system. It has led to a great deal of uncertainty and people say there are cases that are in limbo because of this.

That is why it is very important that we are having this debate. The Garda Síochána and the people in charge of it should be able to look upon the Government and us as legislators and be able to say that we are being sure-footed, exact and precise about what we are doing. We want to help the members of the Garda in doing their work. I know that the Minister, in her important and serious role as Minister for Justice, is intent on doing nothing but good with regard to this legislation. All she is trying to do is help the law enforcers of this country do their work and we all want them to be successful at their work in securing convictions.

The entire realm of data, retention of data, how data are accumulated, how they are preserved and how they are used afterwards is very complicated and complex. When we are dealing with this we have to look at an even bigger picture and that is the advent of the mobile telephone. Mine is ringing at present. It is not just that it is a mobile telephone, but the fact that it is a computer. The Minister knows this because it has been raised with her on numerous occasions. When a member of An Garda Síochána is respectfully going about his or her duty and wishes to pull in somebody for questioning, as he or she is perfectly entitled to do, how many times does it happen that the person the garda is questioning takes the telephone out and records the garda? Two seconds later that can be up on YouTube. The Minister knows how non-factual that can be. A garda can be asking the questions in a very respectful and proper way, but the angle of the telephone, the interpretation of what the garda is doing, the garda's gestures and the way the garda is standing near the person can be misconstrued when it is put up on YouTube. The garda can be ridiculed and made to look bad when the garda is doing nothing other than his or her job. It is very important for us as legislators to think about things like that and to think about protecting the gardaí when they are going about their jobs.

For instance, the use and putting up of things like that has to be looked at. We are not trying to silence people or do anything wrong. We are trying to make sure wrong is not done to the very people who are trying to do things right in trying to keep law and order, which can sometimes be difficult and onerous. We are going in the right direction as regards this Bill. We have to take note of what happened in the landmark Graham Dwyer case, its ramifications and its potential ramifications for future cases. However, I ask the Minister to look at the bigger picture and all the other aspects of the type of issues I have raised. One is the fact that members of the Garda will tell you that the whole idea of everyone going around with a computer in their pockets has posed difficulties for them in carrying out their work in an effective and fair way. I would like the Minister to look at that matter.

I wish An Garda Síochána well in solving many of the undetected crimes. The Minister is well aware of this new technology - I believe it will be used in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case - of the deep reclaiming of DNA. Whereas previously DNA was swiped from a surface, there is now technology that can go deep into the pores of any surface and pull out DNA that might have been hidden and missed in initial investigations. It is hoped that will be used to good effect in the west Cork case. I hope it will. It might give us a lot of answers we have not got for a number of decades now. That is just that case which is, of course, very important. That technology has been perfected and is being used to solve many cases in America over the past year and a half, in particular. It has solved cases that had people perplexed. I hope that it will be used in some of our cases that have been there for a long time now, going back more than 30 years, including unsolved murders and disappearances such as, for example, the Philip Cairns case and many others. Families were left without answers because their loved relatives, children, wives, husbands, sons and daughters, disappeared or were murdered and found. These families were left with nothing but questions afterwards. I hope that An Garda Síochána will start using that technology here and will use it to good effect. Every case that can be closed will bring a conclusion for those families. There are people who are working on cold cases, and going back over these cases for many years, who would dearly wish to bring them to a successful conclusion. I hope that technology is something the Minister will pursue during her term to make sure it will be used to good effect here.

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