I am opposed to this legislation on the basis of the potential for it to be used to convict people mistakenly, particularly people of colour, working-class young people and minorities. We have a lot of grounds to say that. The Bill is part of an increasingly repressive turn in policing and follows a pattern that already exists here, in Europe, in the US and in other countries worldwide. We have seen examples of that in relation to the Palestine solidarity movement, with of the use of pepper spray and the way activists have been arrested. The key reason is that there is absolutely no accountability on the part of the Garda. If the Minister is going to tell me that Fiosrú holds gardaí accountable, my answer is that it does not. The potential for this technology to be used against minorities is immense. I will speak first on the technology and then on the racial aspect. This technology involves the use of AI to scan images or videos of a person. These are then matched with details on a database that can be used to find suspects of a crime or a missing person. The Metropolitan Police has used this technology. According to its statistics, 63.6% of identity checks using the technology were incorrect. In 2023, 65% of all identity checks were incorrect when the technology was used. In some studies, women with coloured skin were 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white males. In the US, Asian and black Americans were 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white Americans. Those are real statistics. They are a cause for concern. There have been seven wrongful arrests in the US as a result of the use of facial recognition technology. That is something fundamental to the system. As we have seen, AI is trained with images of people from the global north, the majority of whom are white. The bias is impossible to take out of the system. We have seen many other examples where AI is male dominated. It follows the cultural practices of the people who control it and those who create it. The Irish State does not have a good track record with this technology. For example, similar technology is used to scan and verify biometric data on people's public services cards. According to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, one third of applications need to be checked by a human in order to ensure everything is correct. A key point is that gardaí are systemically biased against minorities. All of the studies carried out have shown this, even those that the Garda has compiled. The Irish Network Against Racism, INAR, report found that 83% of non-white people believed they had been racially profiled. In a 2022 survey,59% of Travellers indicated that they believed they were stopped because of their ethnicity. An internal survey by the Garda found that 100% of the gardaí surveyed had negative views of Travellers and 30% had negative views of black Africans. Is the Minister at all concerned about those figures? Has he ever discussed them with gardaí? He is bringing in this technology knowing that these biases exist. As gardaí are the ones who will be reviewing the results the technology will produce, surely these racist views can come into play. Beyond anything else, it is debatable whether this technology is even useful for what it is intended to do. It does not dissuade criminality, for example, nor does it put people off carrying out criminal attacks or anything like that. It is a move towards more surveillance by the State. I want to refer further to the racial aspect of policing and the tools that gardaí already have. We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the killing of George Nkencho, a constituent of mine, by gardaí. George was a young man who lived in the Clonee-Littlepace area, which is very close to where I live. He went to the shops in Hartstown. Something happened there, and there was an altercation with a member of staff. Allegedly, an assault took place, which was terrible and which should not have happened. What should have happened was that George should have been questioned and charged if there was a crime to answer for. He should still be alive today. Instead, he was dead within about 20 minutes. George was the first person of colour killed by An Garda Síochána in Ireland, which is extremely significant. He was also a person with known mental health issues. Gardaí had been to the house in relation to George. There were gardaí present who were well aware of the issues that he had. Fundamentally, what happened was the result of a nervous breakdown, ironically arising from the killing of one of his best friends by racists in Tyrrelstown. Two people from the same football team ended up dead. It is quite unbelievable. If this were fiction, it would be seen to be unbelievable. Whatever happened that day - and, obviously, somebody has to face up to a crime - those who died should be alive. There is no question about that. The penalty for an assault cannot be death. Gardaí followed George in their car, adding to the distress involved. When they got to his house, the armed unit arrived very quickly. I do not know why the armed unit would be need to arrest a young man on his own doorstep. Why was it necessary to inflame the situation? It was not the local gardaí who were at the forefront. We keep being told that gardaí are well capable of dealing with mental health issues, but their abilities were certainly not brought into play that day. We are talking now about giving gardaí biometric analysis tools, body cameras, tasers and more rights to use pepper spray, which is in related legislation that will accompany this Bill. What about the actions of gardaí on that particular day? It is alleged in the media that a taser was used on George, yet he was still able to rise up and attack those gardaí. The key issue is this. Five years on, that family, who lost their son, had to endure a horrific torrent of abuse generated by the far right, which kicked into overdrive when it happened. The abuse happened around Covid, when everybody was online. Within minutes, as is scientifically proven, those involved spread all sorts of lies about George being a criminal, stabbing somebody and attacking them with a machete. The Garda subsequently stated that none of this was true. Not only that, GSOC, as it then was, and the DPP refused to reveal what happened that day. As a result, the family have been left with no answers. They still do not know why George was killed. The Minister stated previously that gardaí should not operate with their arms tied behind their backs. We also need safeguards for situations where gardaí shoot people. All of the rules were breached that day on 30 December 2020; of that there is absolutely no question. It is indefensible how the family have been treated. I want to raise police accountability. Of course we need policing. We need a police force that is accountable, democratic and answerable to the communities it serves, including minorities. My party colleague from Dublin West said the Garda is doing a great job in Blanchardstown. Blanchardstown is a very diverse community. I would not have the same confidence at all because there is no democratic forum minorities can feed into. That is something the Nkencho family have called for but is not operating in the area at all. Of course we need a Garda that will respond to calls on gender-based violence, antisocial behaviour and when people are victims of a crime but when gardaí end up killing somebody or carrying out any miscarriage of justice, who holds them to account? If a gang member, a well-known criminal, was killed by anybody else, there would be an investigation and a trial. It seems when a garda kills someone, there is no investigation that everybody can see and ask questions about, is held in full public view and there is no trial. There should be a trial of the gardaí who carried out that killing that day. Why is there a difference applied to gardaí? They should not be beyond any questioning. We still need questions answered about why George Nkencho was killed five years ago. His family deserve that and they should not face the full rigours of the State closing ranks and not being accountable. That garda stayed working for those five years. He was not put on leave - nothing whatsoever - when clearly George should not have been shot twice in the back as he was reaching for his door. Two of the shots were into his back. Was there racism at play that day? We will never know, it seems, unless we have a full, open and independent inquiry. There will be an inquest in the new year. I hope it will lead to the calling of an independent inquiry because it is completely unfair that a family who lost their son get no answers when for anybody else who ends up being killed, there is a trial.

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