I would also like to take this opportunity to wish everybody in Dáil Éireann a Happy Christmas and I would like to single out two people in particular, Karen Hinkson-Deeney and Míde Nic Fhionnlaoich, who are my team and without whom I could not have had this first year as a TD. I want to build on Deputy Gannon's points around this particular technology, which I have huge concerns with. Some of the key points I want to make are around the high-risk use of AI and the fact the appropriate safeguards are not yet in place; and around the civil liberties that are at risk when essentially, we are seeking convenience for law and order while potentially weakening our justice system. I have concerns about this legislation being introduced in advance of the EU AI Act coming into effect and, finally, as many others have done, I want to touch on the point that this technology is not infallible and we are not yet ready to deal with those errors. First, this is a high-risk use of AI and those appropriate safeguards are not in place to address that risk. The AI advisory council subgroup on facial recognition technology has cited that this technology is high risk and therefore carries massive potential consequences for the individuals it is used on. This Bill, in practice, interferes with the privacy rights of individuals using technology that we do not yet understand without the person affected having necessarily done anything wrong. There is a real and obvious lack of independence to this, which shows that safeguards are, at best, ill-conceived and at worst, I would say, deliberately weak. We have a code of practice that potentially can be amended without consultation based on what the Garda Commissioner and the Minister think count as minor changes. I am afraid you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; we need real, independent oversight of this technology. When we erode civil rights and liberties for convenience, we create a weaker justice system. Our rights as individuals need to be protected in the context of a criminal investigation, not trampled on the minute one goes from being a citizen to being a suspect. This is another example of pushing for adoption of technology first and dealing with the consequences later. The legal and criminal justice systems cannot become the testing ground where we move fast and break things. People's lives, justice for victims, and the assurances of those investigating crimes that they are indeed upholding the law, are all threatened by adopting risky tactics that threaten people's access to justice. The administration of justice is a balance of the rights, not a practice of finding what is most convenient for the State while leaving us vulnerable to unsafe convictions and miscarriages of justice. Caithfidh muid cearta an ghnáthdhuine a chosaint. Faoin dlí, go dtí go bhfuil duine ciontaithe, is ghnáthdhuine é nó í. Má fhaigheann muid réidh leis sin agus má chaitheann muid cearta daonna sna fátaí lofa ar mhaithe leis an rud is éasca a dhéanamh, ní fiú tada na cearta sin d’aon duine. I strongly believe this legislation should not be introduced in advance of the EU AI Act coming into effect and this is an area I have done a lot of work on. Something which concerns me in the context of this legislation is that facial recognition and biometric analysis technology is a high-risk use of AI under the EU AI Act and this Act has not yet been fully implemented. Indeed we have a digital omnibus being proposed which will change it before it even comes into effect. Despite this, we have the Government, which is so keen to delay Private Members' Bills, wants to fire ahead with a law that may be rendered unworkable in the space of a year. We cannot say this Bill will uphold human rights and governance when it comes to AI when the bodies responsible for monitoring that are still being set up and designated. It is irresponsible to implement a measure like this in criminal investigations when we do not have the structures to ensure we are protecting people and the integrity of criminal investigations. This tech is not infallible, as we have heard from so any others today, and we are not yet ready to deal with the biases within these systems. A litany of experts on tech, bias, human rights and on AI have all said time and again that this type of technology is rife with bias, which is hard to identify and even harder to eradicate. A false positive on grainy footage that is then signed off by a person whose analysis will be naturally biased by the machine's result and the fact he or she had already identified them as a potential suspect, is what we are facing here. Dr. Abeba Birhane from the AI advisory council wrote in The Irish Times: In seeking legislation to allow the use of facial recognition technology in policing, Ireland risks introducing a technology that scientific evidence has demonstrated is ineffective, inherently flawed, opaque and discriminatory. Ethnic minorities face the sharp end of this bias. They are more likely to be considered a suspect by the Garda anyway, something which under this Bill would strip them of their right to privacy. Research has shown time and again that these machines are less accurate on the faces of ethnic minorities. The risk of racial profiling already exists in our police and FRT will only deepen those biases. To summarise, I genuinely support the use of technology for An Garda Síochána and I realise that cutting-edge technology needs to be made available for our police service to continue to serve our communities as they do with community policing and with peacekeeping. It cannot be done unless we uphold the appropriate oversight and the human rights and equality standards which we require. I commend the work of the Policing Authority and Fiosrú. I know the Policing Authority has merged with the Garda Inspectorate. They do an incredible job, I believe, of observing these and I hope they will be heavily involved in any continued oversight of the deployment of these new technologies because that is what it required. In my previous role and in my human rights and equality work I learned to understand why this is so important because while I, as an individual - a white, settled, southside Dublin woman - have had only positive interactions with An Garda Síochána over the course of my life when I have had cause to do so, I have learned from direct consultation with people from the Travelling community and people from the black community that their experience with An Garda Síochána is not always the same, sadly. They at times can feel very over-policed and underserved by An Garda Síochána. The difficulty I have with this type of technology is that this will only be amplified by the introduction of things like facial recognition technology, until we have the appropriate safeguards and oversight built into place to allow it to be deployed fairly.

Sentiment score: 0.06