I will be supporting this amendment and a similar one tabled by Deputy Kelly. We all appreciate that An Garda needs tools to investigate serious crime, find missing people of people and protect the public. Nobody on this side of the House will ever dispute that. However, our job is to make sure that when we hand these tools over we do so in a way that is legally sound. The Bill introduces a new concept of biometric analysis which is defined across three limbs in section 43A. The first allows gardaí to automatically recognise and categorise physical features of individuals generally from footage gathered in an investigation. The second allows them to track particular unidentified persons across that footage. The third allows them to locate particular identified persons using the same process. The Bill carefully avoids using the language of the EU AI Act, but the EU AI Act does not care what we call things; it cares what we do. What these powers do - in particular the first limb - is categorise people on the basis of their biometric data, namely, skin colour, hair colour, eye colour and body shape. By any plain reading, that is a biometric categorisation within the meaning of the AI Act. The AI Act is not aspirational. Rather, it is binding and it is explicit that biometric categorisation systems used by law enforcement are classified as high-risk AI systems. This classification carries with it a suite of mandatory obligations under Articles 26 and 27. These are obligations on the deployer, which in this case is An Garda Síochána. Those obligations include: ensuring human oversight by personnel with the necessary skills, training and authority; monitoring the system for risks to fundamental rights; suspending use of the system if such a risk arises; maintaining logs for a minimum of six months and carrying out a data protection impact assessment and, under Article 27, conducting a detailed fundamental rights impact assessment before deploying the system and sharing results with the market surveillance authority. I did raise this on Committee Stage and I was told that the code of practice would deal with it. I want to gently but firmly push back on that. A code of practice prepared by the Garda Commissioner and reviewed every five years is not an adequate substitute for statutory obligations enshrined in primary legislation.

Sentiment score: 0.08

I should say that we are not raising these issues to obstruct. We are raising the issues because there is the potential for quite clear legal vulnerabilities here. The Bill, as it is presented to us and as we can see before us, has brought suggestions from some organisations that there are some violations of the AI Act and EU regulations. We can only scrutinise what is in front of us as it is presented to us. With regard to the use of this technology, particularly in some of the cases the Minister outlined of the most serious nature where we want prosecution if a person is found to be guilty, we do not want to leave legal loopholes that people can use to remove themselves from prosecution because the tools that have been used by the State to establish guilt are being seen as a breach of an EU law. That is the vulnerability I am highlighting. I am not sure from the Minister's answer if that will be addressed in the legislation that actually gives confidence to what we are doing here today.

Sentiment score: -0.12