I had not planned on speaking but I was listening to the debate. I would like to be associated with all the wishes of goodwill in relation to this time of year to staff and all our colleagues in the Houses. It has already been iterated that Sinn Féin's position is we are not opposing this Bill but the Minister has already indicated amendments will come. We are discussing a Bill tonight but I presume that Bill will change. I would like to think the Minister will take on board many of the concerns shared by the Opposition and people on the Government benches about this technology. We are opening a door regarding the use of this technology. The concern I have is that once we open this door, it will be very hard to close it. The big question we are asking tonight is where this technology is going to lead us. What will the end result be? The Minister said that the technology the Government intends to provide for this legislation will allow the Garda to process a vast amount of footage and imagery much more efficiently than is currently the case. I do not think any of us have a difficulty with that. The current situation is that if there is a serious crime, people are asked if they have dashcam footage and so on. A point made by Deputy Ó Snodaigh was that it seems strange Joe public is asked. It is a regular thing. If there is a crime on Grafton Street, they will go to the shops there and look at the bank and all places where there is footage. It seems odd that Garda vehicles do not have technology currently. It seems out of sorts. Perhaps that needs to be looked at. Many of my colleagues expressed concerns relating to where the technology has gone wrong. We only have to look across the water to see many of those cases, for example the Jean Charles de Menezes case, a Brazilian who was mistakenly profiled and ended up losing his life. There was talk at that stage of a complete review of the situation, but the man was dead. There was no real recourse for his family in relation to an apology. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and fitted the profile. At the moment, in my constituency, we have CCTV run by the Garda. I have seen the operation. We also have council CCTV. I understand there are challenges in using that under, I think, the planning laws at that time were introduced and it can only be used for certain things. The question a lot of people who attend public meetings have is why that cannot be used or why that camera is broken. There is support in the community to try to track criminality but there are also concerns, as others said, about where this will end up being used. It has also been pointed out about community forums. People are reluctantly supporting this Bill but how it actually unfolds will be important. Amendments will either make or break this Bill in how we go forward.

Sentiment score: -0.09