Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It has always been my view that members of An Garda Síochána should have access to and be wearing body-worn cameras for two very clear reasons. First, I believe it helps in keeping them safe. As the Deputy rightly said, it is important they have that ability to capture an incident as it occurs and have a real picture as to what happened as opposed to an edited or potentially changed version of it. It is also important for gathering evidence and making sure gardaí have the ability to capture evidence and then have access to that evidence in real time and in quick fashion in order that they can then provide it to the courts and provide for quicker prosecutions.

It has been my objective to enact the digital recording legislation, which was passed, thankfully, last Christmas and then roll out the pilot programmes as quickly as possible. The pilot programmes are necessary because three different types of technology are being used across three different areas in Dublin city centre, Limerick and most recently Waterford. What that has done in the short space of time they have been rolled out is give gardaí the ability to understand how the different technologies work and ask what is most effective and then, at the end of the day, choose which one of the body cameras they will use.

The feedback from gardaí already has been really positive. I have spoken to individual members who said they have been in situations where they felt ordinarily things would have escalated and there perhaps would have been violence. Those situations have been de-escalated and they have felt safer. There have been situations where there have been large crowds. In fact, at football matches, the gardaí felt the crowd and overall demeanour changed so much, to the point there was a chant about the body cameras. People are very conscious that they are there and, obviously, that has an impact. On gathering evidence, I saw first-hand footage where people were approached during road traffic incidents and immediately upon seeing the body camera being turned on admitted to what they had done. That obviously took away a huge amount of time that would have been taken up by the gardaí. I am pleased to say that we had the first conviction in the past few weeks where a member had been verbally assaulted for quite a period of time and when that evidence was shown in the courts, the person received a custodial sentence.

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