Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. The concerns I intend to lay out in my contribution today have been well aired by many of our colleagues in the Dáil and by representatives from civil society and the wider public throughout the course of the debate on the Bill. The concerns that have been raised about privacy, fundamental rights and civil liberties are legitimate and it is important that we take the time over the coming weeks to tease them out to ensure the Bill includes adequate and robust protections and safeguards.

I commend the fact that plans to introduce facial recognition technology in the Bill by amendment appear to have been scrapped. However, I ask the Minister to confirm on the record that the Seanad will not be used as a back door to reintroduce the concept of recognition technology without these proposals having undergone the necessary legislative scrutiny. There is an overwhelming amount of international evidence available on the many risks and dangers posed by this technology, in addition to clear soundings from Europe about the potential of banning it within the EU. It is important that we as legislators are given the time and space to consider this evidence in a stand-alone context. The Minister and her colleagues in government have spoken about bodycams in what I consider to be quite narrow terms.

We need to equip gardaí with what they need to do their job safely but the true picture of how bodycams function within the culture of policing and justice system is far more complex, as we know from evidence regarding their use in other jurisdictions. Drawing on that large body of evidence, I am of the view that the Bill as drafted is deeply flawed and requires significant amendment before it can be deemed fit for purpose.The prospect of body cameras functioning as impartial records of a crime scene seems like a good idea in theory but the reality in practice will be something quite different because the legislation as drafted will grant absolute discretion to gardaí as to when and whether cameras are recording. As a result, the cameras risk not capturing a neutral account of a scene, instead becoming a one-sided tool of surveillance. Civilians will have no right under this legislation to request that a body camera is turned on, even if they feel a garda is behaving inappropriately or abusively or is using or may be about to use excessive force. I disagree with Senator Ward that this creates a safe environment for civilians because the power imbalance is very clear here. Civilians do not have the right to ask gardaí at the beginning of an incident, or when they arrive, to turn on the body camera. That is a clear breach of the principles of fairness and justice. I am not sure whether the Minister has ever witnessed violence or police brutality within a community but I have and in many cases, the police have been the aggravators. Imagine a situation in which a garda is an aggravator, provokes a response from an individual and then turns on the body camera. To say that this is something that can protect civilians is completely untrue. This provision, or lack thereof, goes directly against what has been established as international best practice, as identified in other jurisdictions. I am hugely concerned about the omission of basic, rights-based provisions in the Bill such as granting civilians the right to ask that cameras be turned on or off. Additionally, there is no clear procedure for victims or complainants of Garda misconduct to get access to body camera footage relating to their case, which is the norm in other jurisdictions. I ask the Minister to confirm whether these requests and applications will be governed by GDPR subject access rules.

Some provisions of the Bill gesture at privacy rights but ultimately fail to guarantee them. For example, sections 9 and 10 provide that the use of recording devices shall be "overt" and have visible indicators. On first reading, this is a positive nod towards privacy rights but in actual fact, it is a provision that is incomplete. The Bill grants virtually uncapped powers to gardaí to deploy drones wherever they believe is necessary. How exactly can this be done overtly? There are no rules to limit the height at which drones can be operated, nor specific parameters in which their use is permitted. In this context, how will civilians be appropriately informed that they are being watched by a Garda drone?

On the issue of the selective use of body cameras, I want to highlight some relevant international evidence. A 2021 report by Reuters on the use of body cameras in the US found that wide disparities remain in how they are employed and when the footage is made public. Crucially, until 2018 more than half of the jurisdictions in the US where body cameras were used had no clear guidelines for when they should be turned on. I would draw attention to the fact that we do not have any published safeguards in this regard. Such safeguards have been referenced and we have been told about safeguard codes but we are debating this legislation without actually knowing what those codes will include. Will the Minister publish the intended safeguard codes before the Bill is returned to the Chamber?

The selective use of body cameras is not just a problem in terms of whether the cameras are turned on or off. Body cameras can also be used selectively by police when they are turned on, in terms of how their bodies are angled and whether the cameras are obscured at certain moments. One of the most acute and disturbing examples of this abuse occurred in the murder of George Floyd by police in the US. Body cameras were on and activated and the police department insisted after Floyd's murder that he had resisted arrest. It was videos from bystanders and security cameras, not body camera footage, that ultimately revealed that George Floyd had been pinned to the ground with a knee to his neck. We need to know what happens at every point of an incident, which is exactly why civilians should be able to ask for a body camera to be turned on from the outset or a garda should be obliged to have it turned on when responding to an incident and not be free to decide when to turn it on.

Recent domestic statistics suggest that around 3,000 complaints are made annually to GSOC in relation to Garda conduct. A significant number of such complaints are never resolved, largely due to a lack of evidence. It is noteworthy that 50% of cases are referred back for gardaí to investigate themselves, which is an alarming proportion, while only 2% result in sanctions and yet we wonder why the public are so vocal in stressing their concerns about Garda oversight.This issue has come to the fore again in recent weeks as we observe the profoundly unequal handling of different protests by gardaí. We saw footage of gardaí arresting someone at an illegal eviction simply for chanting, while far right agitators were treated far more gently outside the gates of this very House. The bodycam legislation could and should have offered us some hope for creating an impartial evidence base that GSOC could use robustly to carry out its own investigations instead of simply leaving them to languish or referring them back to gardaí. Doing so would have made both members of An Garda Síochána and the public safer and more secure in their interactions with one another. However, instead of delivering on this potential, the Bill as currently before us risks further undermining the relationship between the police force and the public and further erodes confidence in the Garda. The Bill as drafted has failed to take account of best practices being established in the international context and is missing crucial rights-based provisions. These must be remedied if we want this Bill to work as it is intended, which is to ultimately strengthen the relationship between of An Garda Síochána and the public, such that both parties can approach their engagement with each other with greater confidence. I look forward to the Minister's reply and to teasing out the issues as I have highlighted, among others, in the weeks ahead.