Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The court's suggestion that the retention of data should be reserved to national security is not practicable. We have instances of children abducted and there is an immediate requirement to find out where the abductor's phone is at any given time. That is nothing to do with national security, it has to do with plain humanity. The idea that somehow the privacy or dignity of an individual is improved by saying that the data retention period should be two years rather than six years is laughable. Prior to any of this interference with member states' rights in this matter all of us were subject to the ordinary law, which was that our phone company kept our data for six years because that was the statute of limitation if a person wanted to contest a bill and say that he or she did not owe what the company claimed it owed, or whatever. There was no difficulty as far as most people were concerned about that situation as it existed. There is problem now, however. When I was with the Department of Justice, we and the Attorney General tried to contest the two-year limit when it came through. We were unsuccessful. On totally different privacy grounds, the European Courts of Justice struck down that exact same directive. There is absolutely no reason now why, if a woman disappeared four years ago and the Garda get a tip off now, the Garda cannot go back to a reservoir of information to see if there was contact between a person now suspected of having had an involvement in that disappearance and the victim of the kidnapping or murder. The European Union had better cop itself on. In the so-called pursuit of privacy, the EU has interfered excessively in the rights of member states. It has exposed member states. If this continues, serious crimes will go undetected from now on. An article in The Irish Timestoday reports on member states joining Ireland in our positioning on this case. It is about time that those member states got together and told the European institutions that, if necessary, they will agree to a short supplementary treaty to reverse this situation and to give back to member states the rights to do what is proper for the safeguarding of their citizens. If this goes unchecked, major injustices will be done and criminals will get away with savage crimes that have nothing to do with national security.