Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendments the Minister has just put in may go some way towards amendment No. 40, in that there may be powers. They do not provide an assurance that the powers will not be used in that light at all. It was not addressed whatsoever because while regulations may be made under amendment No. 40, the regulations do not specify it. I draw the Minister to a core principle of Europe, and of Ireland as part of Europe, which is the precautionary principle and the principle of do no harm. With respect to suggesting we are in a situation where we are balancing the potential goods of facial recognition technology against the potential negatives, let us be clear the negatives are clearly proven and demonstrated. The question of what caveats might be balanced out are not.

It is literally only the most conservative groups within Europe, including the European People's Party, that are pushing against this AI directive. I worry we are not taking the opportunity to effectively respect the precautionary principle, the principle of doing no harm and the principle of not excluding something which has been shown to cause very significant harm. When we say this is a discussion that is going on, part of what influences those discussions is what we do in our national states. Let us be clear, Fine Gael are gung-ho for this. There is a lot of language about wanting more use of cameras and facial recognition technologies and so forth that has been in the public domain. Ireland should take the right decision by explicitly stating we will not allow facial recognition technology. While the Minister mentioned the Minister for Transport, whoever that may be in the future, we do not have any guarantees that facial recognition technology is off the table now. Our amendment would have ensured that. Facial recognition technology, with all of those serious dangers mentioned by the Minister and the fact it is so consequential, has cost lives by its inaccuracy and its misuse and it is so deeply encoded with biases in terms of racial biases and biases against women for example, that it has an 89% inaccuracy rate.That is an accuracy rate of 11%. Can the Minister imagine rolling out any other technology with a 10% success rate and a 90% fail rate that would be influencing policing decisions? That is wild, so we should ban it. If we need to amend the legislation, if it is improved in the future, that should be done as part of a long and thoughtful process that would again involve the scrutiny of the committee. The Chair of the committee, Deputy Lawless, has himself been clear about some of the dangers of facial recognition technology.

I am concerned because I do not believe we are taking a sufficiently cautious approach on this. We are not respecting the precautionary principle. I recognise that my amendment No. 40 may no longer be necessary, but I am afraid I must press ahead with the core amendment, which simply says we need to have a ban on this technology because this is a marker that is somewhat dangerous.

I know the Minister's colleagues in the Green Party at European level have recognised the dangers of this technology. I hope it gets banned at European level but it would have been very positive if Ireland had shown leadership by ensuring there would not be a risk of it being inserted and activated in national legislation pending that process.