Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 12, between lines 22 and 23, to insert the following:

“(3) Where an enforcement officer exercises functions under subsection (2), a written report outlining the reasonable grounds upon which such functions were exercised must be submitted to An Garda Síochána or the Minister and a copy of the report must be provided to any court with jurisdiction which hears proceedings in respect of the ship searched under that subsection.”.”

This is in regard to amendments Nos. 21 and 23. Very wide discretionary scope is given to enforcement officers under this legislation. Wide discretion is given and, in many cases, many quite significant things are authorised where an enforcement officer has "reasonable grounds" to believe. Some of the things they can do if they have reasonable grounds to believe include searching persons without warrants, searching of vehicles, searching persons and apprehending and confiscating items. There is a whole section and I could have gone through it with a lot of individual amendments. A simple requirement should be that we do not want this law to become in any sense a danger. I have talked of the very real issue where we had intimidation of boats engaged in rescue activity in the Mediterranean. We want to ensure the law is not used to create a sense of jeopardy or intimidation, or that it is not abused.In order to ensure that, I have simply suggested that where an enforcement officer has reasonable grounds as a basis for the exercise of any function under the section, that officer would give a written report outlining the reasonable grounds upon which his or her functions were exercised. In some cases, it will be to An Garda Síochána but in other cases, the Minister can delegate enforcement officer powers outside of An Garda Síochána. In those cases, those individuals will provide the Minister, who had delegated them with those powers, with a clear explanation of what were the reasonable grounds. That is a reasonable bar to put. If one said one had reasonable grounds, one would explain exactly what were those reasonable grounds to form a belief or for those actions. It would increase accountability in respect of this issue.

We had similar questions when debating the canals legislation regarding the issue of enforcement officers being given certain powers to search canal boats. The question arose that there needs to be a clear basis for such actions. We should be able to see what were the reasonable grounds in future prosecutions and in future actions that might happen.