I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I commend the work of An Garda Síochána. In my district in Dublin West they do incredible work on a daily basis. We saw the difficulties they faced during the disgraceful riots in Dublin and sometimes during those incidents we really see how effective they can be in protecting society. While we welcome the move to introduce the use of body-worn cameras, which is seen as a necessary tool to protect the Garda and the public, we do have concerns around this Bill and particularly around facial recognition technology. There are deep concerns citing potential issues with racial profiling and its problematic implementation in other jurisdictions. We have seen time and again where concerns have been raised where this technology is actually in place. There are huge gaps in the Bill around protection and the use of AI. This is newish technology and the people need to be protected from abuse of this. We know from history that pretty much every police force pushes the boundaries of what is right and what it sees as being in its interests. It is our responsibility to ensure that when facial recognition technology - which is used in conjunction with AI - is used, it is used in an appropriate way and not abused by any sections of the State. There is a strong need for rigid safeguards to ensure sensitive data is stored securely and not inappropriately shared, referencing past incidents where Garda data handling was an issue. I am deeply concerned about who holds this information and where it is held. We have seen that a lot of these companies are American companies and Israeli companies. The Israelis are embedded in a lot of this AI facial recognition technology. We know what they do with that; they kill Palestinians. They kill them on a daily basis using facial recognition. We know this technology is out there. We know it is being abused by police forces. I am certainly not saying that is what will happen but with the technology and the information they have, what companies will be subcontracted to hold this information? I have huge concerns around that. Technology can only bring us so far. In my constituency, and I have referenced this before, we recently benefited from a number of new gardaí in our area. Five gardaí were recently attested and sent to Dublin 15, but we lost four due to promotions. Fair play to them. They got promotions and moved on, but it left us with one garda to cover an area that includes Finglas, Blanchardstown and Cabra. Many years ago, I would say to gardaí that we needed a new Garda station and they would say that we just needed more gardaí. Now they are telling us that not alone do we need more gardaí, we also need a new Garda station because of the size of Dublin West. In the context of technology, for the past four years I have been asking about drones for the Garda. I have been getting ridiculous answers and contradictory information from both the Department and the Garda. We have that technology, but it is not being used. I will give a simple example. There are huge estates in Dublin 15, and gardaí are still cycling around them on pushbikes. It is ridiculous. Young people are flying along on electric bikes and scooters at 40 km/h and 50 km/h, and gardaí are on pushbikes. The technology is there, but it is not being used. There is merit in some of the legislation, but Sinn Féin and I have massive concerns about the speed of the roll-out of the Bill. It needs to be slowed down because much more scrutiny is needed.

Sentiment score: 0.05