Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for the time he gave to explaining the Bill in his remarks. The Bill stands on its own. It is not just about building confidence with our EU partners in the context of Brexit. It is a necessary and long overdue Bill.

We will certainly be looking at safeguards on Committee Stage. In fairness to the Minister, he will want the safeguards on data protection issues to be provided for in the Bill also. I have confidence that he and his Department will ensure those safeguards are provided for in the detail of the Bill. Like all legislation, it is the detail and the unintended consequences that we have to be so careful about. Our partners in Paris, London and other cities have experienced terrorism and loss of life. It is important for legislation to provide for speedy investigation. We suffered from terrorism for many decades on this island, as well as from serious crime and cross-border criminality. The provisions of this Bill could have helped in the past with tracking down and dealing with things more quickly.

I have one question for the Minister. He stated that only full registration number plates will be accessible under the legislation. Sometimes in cases of serious crime, witnesses may only note a partial number plate which would then be fed on to the policing authorities. For the sake of excluding people from the investigation, sometimes a partial number plate trace can be helpful. Is it the Minister's intention to exclude at all stages requests where the full registration is not supplied? Sometimes it is in the detail of these Bills that we find where we need to help our authorities in a speedy investigation of crime. Sometimes only a partial number plate may have been observed and sometimes it would help a police authority to track down or exclude large elements of the population on the basis of that partial number plate. I am not laying a trap or anything in raising that question, rather it is just curiosity.I thank the Chairman.