Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have had the joy of visiting Ljubljana, Bled, the caves at Postojna and Škocjan and some of the other areas. It really is a beautiful country and I encourage Members to travel there if they get the opportunity. I wish Slovenians a very happy national day.

I raise the proposal by the British Government to introduce a new bill of rights.My concern is that, as the Leader will be aware, as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the British Government incorporated the European Convention of Human Rights into the domestic law of Northern Ireland through the Human Rights Act. It would be of serious concern if this proposed new UK Bill of Rights that is being brought forward by Dominic Raab, would seek to in some cases ignore decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and in some ways may undermine the convention. I ask, given that we hold the presidency of the Council of Europe, that this matter that would be treated as a priority. I have serious concerns around some of the elements that we understand are being proposed in this new UK legislation. I ask that the Leader would raise it with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney.

I also understand that the Department of Justice is about to engage in a consultative process around the use of facial recognition technology. In this regard, it is my hope that we will have a national strategy on artificial intelligence, AI. The strategy should be based on an ethical approach to the use of technology and particularly facial recognition technology. I would like assurances. We need to have a debate on the use of AI and facial recognition technology more widely. I know that in the drawing up of the national AI strategy, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment engaged quite widely. The approach has been human rights-based and ethically based. It will be essential that any approach taken by the Department of Justice follows this method. I would like us to have a debate on those issues.

Finally, I want to raise an issue that the Coach Tourism and Transport Council, CTTC, will also raise again today. We have raised this issue previously. Approximately 300 scheduled bus services are operated by private operators. They have not been able to avail of the very welcome 20% reduced fares initiative that public transport offer operators have been able to offer nor have they been able to offer the youth-adult travel card, because agreement has not yet been fully reached. I ask that we work to ensure that customers of private and commercial coach operators are treated in exactly the same way as those who avail of the services of the public service operators.