Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I accept Senator Flynn's bona fides in saying where the amendments are coming from. I spent a lot of time in my professional career defending the people Senator Flynn spoke about and the High Court jurisprudence is littered with cases that have been taken against unjustifiable and arbitrary decisions by gardaí to stop and search people and so on. The Senator is right about that.

My concern is that this amendment will not fix that. The danger with some of these amendments is that they abdicate the responsibility for a robust policy. That policy needs to set down when a garda should use the camera, when a garda must use the camera and when a garda must not turn off the camera. It also must set out all the reasons that go with that because there cannot be a situation where a garda is selectively recording. In welcoming this legislation, I said that it protects gardaí from false accusations and the suggestion that something was or was not said.Equally important is that it also protects citizens from overzealous gardaí. An Garda Síochána on the whole is a fantastic organisation, as I have said, but that does not mean there are not bad gardaí or gardaí who step over the line. The wearing of cameras will put a restriction on a bad garda's activity. If there is a garda who feels he or she can behave with impunity, as Senator Flynn noted, there will be a recording of that behaviour and disciplinary procedures will follow from it.

Provision in this regard should be set out in the protocol. Putting all those provisions into the legislation is a bad idea because it means they are absolutely inflexible and we would have to come into the House to change, update or make them more rigorous, as the case may be. They need to be flexible and under the control of Garda management and the relevant bodies that monitor gardaí to ensure they can be changed, updated and strengthened if that is required. Supporting and passing this legislation is done on the clear understanding that there will be protocols that set out in the clearest and strictest terms for members of An Garda Síochána the circumstances in which these bodycams will be used and the treatment of the data thereafter. The protections being sought in these amendments must be set out in the protocols rather than in the Bill.