Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Clearly it is impractical to have ministerial intervention in every request for who telephoned who. As a matter of practicality in the investigation of, say, a kidnapping, a bank robbery or whatever, that work would involve looking at a suspect and seeing who did the suspect telephone during the relevant period. It might also involve looking at the suspect's contacts. I would spend all my life writing further warrants and I would have to move into Garda headquarters because one could not have the same degree of ministerial control and accountability in an issue that is going to change from hour to hour. I do not want to speak about current cases but Members are aware this kind of material is important and that it could not possibly involve the Minister having an intervening role as he does in relation to interception of the content of communications.

It appears to me that if we are giving a statutory basis for the retention of data we should, at the very least, insert the two judicial protections to ensure that somebody who thinks their data has been improperly accessed can make a complaint to a judicial figure and have their situation investigated. Even if there is no controversy and nobody is aware of it, there is a person whose job it is to go over all these transactions to ensure it is not being abused by the senior Garda officers who are given the power to apply for this kind of data. That is the balance that is being struck here.

Senator Cummins asked why now and why in this mechanism. I have until 5 May to deal with this issue. The Houses of the Oireachtas will have its Easter holidays and the St. Patrick's Day break fairly soon. If I were to provide for all of this in a separate Bill it would be doubtful if I could meet the 5 May deadline. I can say for a certainty that it is cognate to this Bill in that any effort to monitor international terrorism or to counter it would fall flat on its face if, on 5 May, telecommunications data was to become erased automatically after six months. Any effort to look back over a reasonable period, which is 36 months in the Government's view, would become impossible if the telecommunications companies accepted the validity of the directive they have now received from the Data Commissioner. I had hoped to avail of the European basis for making rules in this area but it did not materialise. I have now my own sunset clause coming down the tracks at me on 5 May. Therefore, after long consideration it was decided the appropriate course of action was to take advantage of this legislative vehicle to insert these new provisions into our law.