I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation on Electronic Evidence and Other Matters) Bill 2026. The objective of this Bill is to support efforts to tackle crime being facilitated over the Internet. The large drugs cartel being organised on an encrypted app, the fraud run from a server in another country, the grooming of a child through a social media account or the money laundered through a chain of digital transactions - none of these crimes respects a border. The evidence sits on servers that may be in Dublin, in Frankfurt, in any country or in a data centre on another continent. The development of the online ecosystem has outpaced existing legislation, and even where national governments have introduced legislation, the transnational nature of the problem means an EU-wide response is warranted and necessary to address the issue. Today, when a Garda investigation needs evidence held on servers in another member state, the process is slow. A European investigation order can take up to 120 days. A mutual legal assistance request takes, on average, ten months. Think about what ten months mean in a live investigation. Data is deleted, trails go cold and victims ultimately wait. A suspect who should go before a court remains at large. That delay is not a technical inconvenience; it is a gap that major criminals regularly exploit. This Bill closes that gap. It transposes the EU e-evidence directive and gives further effect to the e-evidence regulation. Together, they create two new tools. The first is the European production order. This will allow a judicial authority in one member state to obtain electronic evidence directly from a service provider in another. It must respond within ten days or, in an emergency, within eight hours. It is ten days instead of ten months. The second is the European preservation order, which allows authorities to require that specific data be preserved so it is not lost while a fuller request is prepared. The scale here is significant. It is expected that up to 600 service providers could designate an addressee in Ireland. The number of production orders issued to providers based here is anticipated to exceed 300,000 every year. Our own authorities are likely to issue around 2,000 orders to providers in other member states to advance investigations here at home. These are not abstract figures. Each order represents an investigation into a real crime affecting real people. To manage this, the Bill establishes a new office, the office of director of criminal justice international co-operation. The new office is necessary, as it centralises functions that would otherwise be scattered across existing bodies. The State is right to centralise the skills, expertise and responsibility to one office. There will be a single point of contact for cross-border co-operation on electronic evidence. The director will monitor and enforce compliance by service providers and will have the power to impose financial penalties where providers fail to meet their obligations. On the previous speaker's point about staffing, it is clear that the office will be built up on a phased basis, with the process to appoint a director now under way. When the State takes on new powers to access people's data, the safeguards matter as much as the powers themselves. The Bill, and the package behind it, takes that seriously. It is important to note the protections being proposed. The framework guarantees strong protection of fundamental rights, including the right to the protection of personal data. A person whose data is sought is entitled to legal remedies. Where it is warranted, the authorities of the member state in which the provider is established will be brought in through a notification mechanism and can stop the production of data on a defined list of grounds. The director here in Ireland will scrutinise certain incoming production orders and may refuse them on the grounds set out in the regulation. Where a provider faces a conflict of laws, a specific procedure involving a judge or a court applies. All of this will be run through a secure, decentralised IT system that authenticates everyone taking part. Requests for sensitive data will not be flying around on email. These are real checks, not just window dressing. The Bill also does something sensible in joining up our response to terrorist content online. Under the EU's terrorist content online regulation, removal orders can be issued requiring hosting providers to take down terrorist material. The receiving state must be able to scrutinise those orders to ensure they do not breach the regulation or, indeed, fundamental rights. Ireland struggled to find a suitable body for that scrutiny role. The Garda Commissioner was designated on an interim basis to address an infringement case. The Bill assigns that scrutiny function to the new director, where it sits naturally alongside the very similar task of scrutinising incoming production orders. It is a coherent fit and puts a proper, permanent arrangement in place. The transposition deadline for the e-evidence directive was 18 February this year. I welcome the work to date by the Minister and his officials on the legislation. Ireland hosts a large share of Europe's digital economy. Many of the service providers that other member states will turn to for evidence are based here. That gives us a responsibility and an opportunity. By implementing this package fully and on a proper footing, we confirm Ireland as a serious centre of expertise for digital regulation and a reliable partner in the digital Single Market. We give legal certainty to the businesses operating here. We also give confidence to our European partners that when they come looking for evidence of a serious crime, Ireland will be ready to assist lawfully and quickly. This Bill is about giving An Garda Síochána and our courts the modern tools they need to investigate modern types of crime while protecting the rights of citizens at every step. It honours a commitment in the programme for Government, it meets our European obligations and it makes us a more compatible and trustworthy partner in the fight against serious cross-border crimes.

Sentiment score: 0.00