Ciarán Ahern
Dublin South-West · Labour Party · Ireland
“What we are asking for today is simply that the Government lives up to the commitment made in the programme for Government to carry out a new, independent feasibility study for an extension of the MetroLink from where it is currently due to end in Charlemont, out to Dublin south west.”
“It examined quite a nonsensical route that finished abruptly in Knocklyon, and therefore it significantly underestimated the cost benefit of the project.”
“This all comes back to funding our schools. All too often, despite the much publicised overspend in the education budget, schools still have to fight tooth and nail to get the resources they need. I never predicted that so much of my time as a TD would be spent working with local schools on funding and resourcing issues.”
“As the capitation grant is not covering basic operating costs, many school boards feel that to avoid running deficits, which they will get into trouble for from their governing bodies, they have to find funds elsewhere.”
“As the Minister knows, parents are paying hand over fist for ancillary school costs, be it for school uniforms, laptops, school transport or the so-called voluntary contributions. We cannot say we have free education in this country if the whole architecture that enables proper participation is hugely expensive for parents.”
“Some parents are now having to pay hundreds of euro for devices if their children are to just fully participate in school. As this motion states, we are at risk of creating a digital divide and new inequalities in our education system unless we put further supports in place for low-income families. Kevin Shortall, principal of St.”
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“It is easy to imagine scenarios where the absence of proper legal advice leads to errors in applications and sees genuine asylum seekers, fleeing war or persecution, fail in their applications or be denied specialist care. That would be an abject failure of the Government to see through our obligations. Previously, asylum applicants were only entitled to be represented at the second stage of the asylum process, before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. This resulted in 90% of asylum seekers being rejected at first instance. I was proud to be part of a programme providing early legal advice for asylum seekers, in conjunction with the Irish Refugee Council and my former law firm, A&L Goodbody, which resulted in far higher success rates for applicants. We know how important full legal advice is to ensuring individuals can vindicate their rights.”
“As the Law Society has pointed out, in the absence of clarity as to what it is, we need to ask whether a "legal counselling" regime can be fully set up and resourced by June of this year. The EU pact does not require this. The Government could and should have used the term "legal advice" but has actively chosen not to. That creates real uncertainty as to the rights of migrants. It risks undermining access to effective legal assistance, as required under the pact. Solicitors cannot be expected to provide general legal counselling while the State withholds individualised, tailored legal advice from people who would otherwise be their clients.”
“Rather than providing individuals with good old-fashioned, tried and tested legal advice from a solicitor during the first stage of an international protection process, the Government is saying it will provide something called "legal counselling". I have never heard this phrase, despite practising as a lawyer for many years. This is a term introduced by the EU pact but it remains undefined to date. We do not know what it will involve or who will provide it. It seems to be little more than a one-way information-giving process in which an applicant would have no ability to interrogate the information given to them against their own personal circumstances, or to ask questions and receive advice and guidance on it.”
“Over the course of this Government’s time in office, we have seen a disappointing pattern of irresponsible grandstanding by Ministers trying to play tough on immigration. This Bill is the latest example. It goes further than is required under the EU migration pact in restricting the rights of migrants and leaves gaping holes when it comes to protecting those rights. There were real issues with the pact, which were raised in debates at the time, but now the Government wants to go further still in constraining migrant rights. I want to speak to a couple of specific issues that show this Bill for what it is. First is the Bill’s use of the term "legal counselling".”
“Not only does the Government's attitude risk undermining effective access to justice and crucial environmental laws, it could also put the whole mission at risk by taking its eye off the ball. What we need is investment and resourcing of our planning bodies and courts as this is where the real delays and backlogs lie. It is little more than performative to attack those who simply seek to ensure that our laws are being complied with. We should also be honest that these judicial reforms will likely themselves be subject to legal challenge, including in the European courts. All of us in Ireland need this plan to work. The Government needs this plan to work too, and we will be holding Ministers to account in the years to come to make sure the tide finally turns on our delivery of crucial infrastructure.”
“I do, however, have concerns about the Government's over-zealous focus on judicial reviews, JRs. Legal reforms may be a necessary part of a comprehensive process like this but the Government seems to view limits to judicial reviews as a panacea, which will solve all of our problems. It will not. We should be clear that there is no silver bullet here. The Government must tread very carefully. Access to effective justice underpins our whole democracy. Judicial reviews should not be treated as a bogey man as they have been by this Government. The Law Society noted recently that the number of JRs decreased by 25% in 2025, so we must question the evidential basis for the Government's approach here.”
“A duty for State bodies to co-operate in making land available and accessible for critical infrastructure, something that would seem so blindingly obvious to anyone else and should already be happening, is long overdue and we really do welcome that. The commitment to clear timelines is positive and the Government should further commit to non-negotiable delivery dates for the departmental implementation plans described in this document. That would be an indication of confidence from the Government in its own plan. Accountability will be key to the success of this report and we welcome the clear lines of responsibility for Ministers and senior civil servants in the document. The Labour Party and the public will be holding the Minister's own performance against this plan to account.”
“While it was sitting our record tax receipts, it allowed our infrastructure gap to widen and widen. The plan announced before Christmas was at least an effort to take the issue seriously. It was a roll of the dice by the Government to finally tackle the generational problems that it, to a large part, has created for itself. There are certainly some welcome measures within the plan but these are things that any government worth its salt should have already been doing, so, in many respects, this plan amounts to an admission of failure. The streamlining of approvals for critical infrastructure projects is very welcome, so is the greater co-ordination to be demanded across the public service on infrastructure delivery.”
“Every week we come into this Chamber and we discuss infrastructure. It might always be the title of the debate but Ireland's infrastructural deficit lies behind so many of the problems we discus every day. Whether we are talking about flooding, commuter chaos or housing, what is really under discussion is the consistent failure of the Government to build and sustain the infrastructure that Ireland needs. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, has said that we are lagging 32% behind our peers when it comes to infrastructure. This is the key reason Ireland, a rich country, can feel poor for too many people. The transport links, housing, hospitals and utilities befitting a rich country are just not there. Over the past decade, this Government has managed to waste a boom.”
“I would like a commitment from this Government that additional resources will be provided to An Garda Síochána so that we can enforce the rules of the road to the highest extent possible and stamp out increasingly dangerous driving.”
“A total of 190 people died tragically on our roads last year, the highest level in ten years. There have been a few events in recent weeks that undermine people's faith in this Government's and this State's commitment to road safety at an institutional level. The Minister for Transport stated in a response to me last week that there is only so much the State can do and that driver behaviour is a big issue. I agree that driver behaviour is a huge issue but that is no surprise because we have little to no enforcement on our roads. This Government is stalling on simple measures like red light cameras and lower urban speed limits. There were supposed to be 150 new roads policing gardaí over the last two years but I understand that, at best, we have another 91.”
“We also forgo significant public health benefits, including reduced air pollution. I would encourage all Members to read the excellent report, "Active Travel: The Magic Pill", from the Climate and Health Alliance on this issue. I recognise that major public transport projects take time, often longer than any of us would like. They cannot be relied upon as immediate solutions to today's congestion crisis. What this motion offers, namely, a genuine right to flexible remote work, can deliver immediate benefits. We know there are thousands of cars on our roads every morning that do not need to be there. This is a workers' rights issue, a quality-of-life issue, a health issue and a climate issue. People's well-being and the well-being of our planet should not be sacrificed for the sake of outdated notions of corporate office culture.”
“Ghost buses, cancellations and delays are common on the S orbital routes and have become increasingly frequent on routes such as the 15 and the 15B. Dublin South-West has long been underserved by public transport. Most of my constituents have no access to rail, meaning every cancellation and every delay only deepens existing frustration. The national development plan was equally disappointing in terms of active travel investment. In real terms, budgets are effectively being cut for active travel over the next five years and have not increased since 2020. This is despite the fact that walking and cycling are the cleanest and most sustainable forms of transport. By reducing investment in safe active travel infrastructure, we undermine people's confidence to leave the car at home.”
“Notwithstanding what the Minister said in this Chamber last week about compulsory purchase order, CPO, processes and procurement, there is a clear lack of urgency from the Government in delivering projects that would do most to alleviate congestion in Dublin and beyond. Even leaving aside projects still in the pipeline, there is a strong perception in my constituency of Dublin South-West that existing public transport services are deteriorating. While my support for BusConnects is on the record, I cannot say that the roll-out of phase 7 last October has served my constituents well so far. The replacement of the No. 49 bus by the F1 route has added 20 to 30 minutes to the morning commute for people travelling from Tallaght, Firhouse and Knocklyon into the city centre.”
“To my mind, the absolute priority in tackling congestion, along with the associated environmental and climate impacts, must be reducing our reliance on private car use. The only way to achieve that is by making public transport and active travel genuinely viable alternatives. In that context, the sectoral investment plan for transport under the national development plan, NDP, was deeply disappointing. Crucial shovel-ready projects will not begin construction until after 2030. Projects that have planning permission and have gone through huge amounts of planning and consultation are being long-fingered.”
“This is fundamentally a workers' rights issue and a quality-of-life issue. People are spending hours every week stuck in traffic, time that could be spent with family, pursuing hobbies or simply living healthier lives. Almost anything would be a better use of that time. Even modest flexibility such as varying people's start times at work would make a meaningful difference to people's lives and to congestion on our roads. Instead, people are being forced back into the offices and required to arrive at the same time as everybody else, creating chaos on our roads. This is something the Government could address almost overnight if it wanted to. We cannot discuss congestion in Dublin without acknowledging the shortcomings in our current system of public transport as well as the state of active travel infrastructure.”
“We are witnessing a rollback on one of the few genuinely positive legacies of the Covid pandemic. People were forced to work from home at that time and the world did not collapse. Businesses continued to operate and profits largely remained intact. Study after study has demonstrated the positive impact of remote and flexible working on productivity. Despite this evidence, we see large corporations, including AIB and major tech and finance firms, issuing blanket return-to-office mandates. More worryingly still, public bodies have followed suit. Enterprise Ireland's recent reversal of its remote working policy is a prime example. I commend Fórsa on pushing back against these regressive moves, which lack justification and often lack any consultation with staff on them.”
“As noted in the motion, Dublin is now the third most congested city in Europe and the 11th most congested city in the world. That is a staggering statistic. I am fortunate enough to be able to cycle to work and as I pass rows of stationary traffic on my way to and from Leinster House, I often ask myself how many of those people genuinely need to be sitting in their cars. How many are driving into an office in the city or elsewhere to do work that could just as easily and just as productively be done from home? I would be willing to bet it is a sizeable proportion. There's little doubt in my mind or among my Labour Party colleagues that the absence of a real, meaningful right to flexible and remote work is contributing significantly to congestion across Dublin and the wider greater Dublin area.”
“The additional lanes added to certain stretches of the M50 completed in 2010 helped temporarily but ultimately encouraged more cars onto the motorway - the well-known phenomenon of induced demand. More recently, the variable speed limit system has made little or no difference to congestion. It is routinely ignored by motorists largely because there is no meaningful enforcement mechanism even though the system is now legally binding. TII, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, has been clear that without a change in Government policy, all of the available options have been exhausted for the M50. We know how fragile the system is. A single incident on the M50 can bring the entire city to a standstill as happened just before Christmas.”
“I move the motion on behalf of the Labour Party. My colleague, Deputy Wall, was meant to lead on this motion but rather ironically - or perhaps appropriately - he is stuck in traffic right now coming in from Athy. Apparently he has been there for three and a half hours. This is a timely motion. The M50 cuts through my constituency and anyone unfortunate enough to have to rely on it to get to work in the morning knows it is an absolute nightmare. The same is true in the evening. It is bumper-to-bumper congestion day in, day out. This has obvious knock-on effects for roads across Dublin city and arterial routes into the capital, including the M7 and N7, as Deputy Wall can attest to later. While various solutions have been proposed and implemented over the years, none has delivered lasting relief to the congestion.”
“I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: — employees in Ireland have no right to flexible and remote work, only a right to request it from their employer; — more workers are being forced back to the office, with some large employers, including in the public sector, moving to increase the number of days per week that must be spent in the workplace; — in a recent study by INRIX, Dublin ranked as the 11th most congested city in the world, and the third worst in Europe; — commuters and drivers now experience significant traffic delays, whether through cities like Galway, on roads like the N40 and N25 in Cork, or on arterial routes into Dublin, such as the M1, M4, M7/N7 and M11; — Transport Infrastructure Ireland has said there is almost nothing it can do to address traffic gridlock on the M50, and that it is at capacity; — more frequent Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) services, and increased capacity on existing routes, has been delayed due to supply issues with new battery trains, with a knock-on impact on other planned network improvements; — public transport projects with planning permission are not progressing due to a lack of political will to provide funds, including DART+ South West, now paused at least four years to beyond 2030, and Luas Finglas delayed until 2029; — commuters cannot rely on bus services to arrive when scheduled, bus lanes are not properly policed, active travel alternatives are not safe, and congestion is worsening; — delivery of active travel infrastructure to encourage cycling and walking is too slow and inconsistent, and the level of investment is falling as a proportion of the transport budget; — traffic congestion leads to increased air pollution and poses a significant public health risk; and — transport is the biggest source of energy demand and the second largest source of emissions in Ireland, which must halve by 2030, and required a decrease of 12.4 per cent in both 2024 and 2025 to meet the sectoral emission ceiling in the first carbon budget, which will not be achieved, with projected reductions of only 1.3 per cent and 2 per cent respectively in those years; recognises that the lack of a right to flexible and remote work, and the failure to provide reliable and accessible active travel alternatives and public transport, particularly in rural Ireland, is forcing more and more workers to rely on private vehicles to reach their place of work, leading to increased congestion and unnecessary carbon emissions; and calls on the Government to: — introduce a real right for employees to flexible and remote work, where it is reasonably practicable; — ensure that the public service leads by example so that workers are not forced back to the office when their work can be carried out remotely; — launch a new Operation Free Flow to address congestion, that includes: — a rapid response team in situ on all arterial routes into the M50, starting with the M7/N7, to respond to road traffic incidents; — the immediate progression of the M4 Bus Priority Lane project, and rollout of this initiative to other routes including the M9 and M7; — a new campaign to improve driver behaviour on our roads and increased roads policing; and — a real time app on traffic updates for commuters, and improved reporting of incidents to local and national media; — urgently introduce an action plan to improve public transport services over the next 12 months, including measures to: — provide more early morning and late-night trains, and increase the frequency of services into Dublin and other cities; — introduce additional train carriages, and explore all options to increase public transport capacity; — fast track the delivery of park and ride/share facilities in cities and outside the greater Dublin area; — introduce automatic number plate recognition cameras, to enforce the rules of the road at junctions and bus gates, and ensure bus lanes are properly policed; — improve the reliability of bus timetables, real time information displays, and the Transport for Ireland App; and — require the National Transport Authority to introduce contactless payment, and guarantee accessibility for people with disabilities on public transport services within 12 months; — reverse the decision to delay DART+ South West and Luas Finglas, and prioritise the rollout of public transport projects including additional Local Link services, Bus Connects, and active travel infrastructure, including quick-build segregated cycle lanes throughout Dublin city and county; and — prioritise the rollout of new Luas lines in Cork, Galway, and Dublin, and the improvement and development of new regional and suburban rail links, including to transport hubs such as Shannon Airport and Rosslare Europort, on the Western rail corridor, and to towns like Navan.”
“It would be interesting to get the statistics on collisions and fatalities in order to understand what the contributing factors are. I appreciate this is a European competency but I want to ensure we are feeding into the European agenda and, to the extent we have any data, providing it in support of any changes needed. Acknowledging the European competency, there are some things from an enforcement perspective we could focus on as part of the NCT. I understand the illegal retrofit of certain LED lights is an issue. Maybe that is something we could clamp down on to ensure it does not happen and bring it more to the attention of the RSA and the Garda when it comes to enforcing the existing standards in our cars.”
“I would push the Minister to carry out some research into this and not necessarily rely on the UK research but doing our own to try to push this issue forward to determine the cause and effect.”
“Many constituents, friends and family of mine who perhaps were travelling a little bit more on country roads over the Christmas period have come to me saying this is not a comfort issue and that it is a serious road safety issue. Depending on the direction or the angle of these lights coming at the driver, which is often from new higher cars and higher positions, they can temporarily blind the driver. Unfortunately, I am raising this in the context of a record of 190 people dying on our roads last year which is the highest since 2014. I raise this with a the view to try to probe any and all solutions to improve our road safety record. It is all well and good having the Minister and I discuss our anecdotal experience.”
“I am glad to hear the Minister's comments on DART+ South West. We will keep pressure on him there. This question relates to road safety. The brightness and intensity of the new style LED car headlights is a cause of concern for a lot of people. Is the Minister aware of a survey commissioned by the RAC in the UK into the safety of LED headlights in modern vehicles? It found four in five drivers were concerned about dazzling headlights. Has the Minister, his Department or the RSA considered the independent research study published by TRL, Transport Research Laboratory, in October 2025 titled Glare from Road Vehicles?”
“Proper regulation of utilities, particularly gas, keeps us all safe. It is vital that the CRU has the powers it needs to do that work. While I question why it took so long to bring this legislation forward and will push the Government to ensure the necessary checks and safeguards are in place on new powers, we in the Labour Party will support this Bill.”
“It has made clear its intention to allow private wires to be built and operated in certain circumstances. We have heard of the safety risks that emerged over several years when private LPG networks were allowed to develop in an unregulated, unmonitored fashion. There are, of course, important differences between these two situations but the fundamentals are the same: local private energy networks. If the Government is to move forward with its private wires initiative, it would be worthwhile to look closely at this case and to ensure that full and effective regulation and safety measures are in place from the off. Has the Department shared learnings across these two processes? This legislation is an important strengthening of the regulatory landscape for natural gas and LPG.”
“My understanding is that the majority of the unregulated networks discovered by the CRU in its investigations from 2016 were in small or medium apartment blocks or housing estates. Housing developers may remain keen to put in place LPG networks if given the chance. Given the well-documented shortage of serviced land that we face, and how that hurts our chances of meeting housing delivery targets, does the Government see a role for local LPG networks in the future of housing delivery? I certainly hope not, given our continued failure to get anywhere near our climate targets, but it would be useful to understand that medium-term intention when considering this Bill. Has the Government considered any lessons for its impending private wires policy?”
“Is the Minister satisfied that removing the 21-day representation period, rather than reducing or otherwise qualifying it, is the best path forward? I also have a broader question. What kind of role does the Government see for LPG networks in Ireland in the future? By legislating for a new class of LPG licence for smaller networks, is the Government taking a step towards encouraging the development of such networks? I would like some clarity from Government on its intentions. We have seen from previous experience that an expansion of smaller LPG networks could pose issues with ensuring effective regulation and safety. How it would intersect with our climate targets at a time when we want to wean ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels is another question to be considered.”
“Another area where powers will be strengthened through the Bill is in the removal of the 21-day waiting period before the CRU can issue an improvement notice to a gas undertaking. That period had allowed an undertaking to make representations to the CRU and engage with it before an improvement notice was issued. The argument, as I understand it, from the Government and the CRU is that this waiting period is inefficient and incompatible with safety when combined with the High Court appeals process. Will this change, however, mean that a High Court appeal is the only option available to an undertaking which feels it has been incorrectly served an improvement notice? Given the state of play in our courts system, we should try to ensure that other options for engagement and mediation are open in all our systems.”
“During pre-legislative scrutiny, the Department told the committee that "these provisions seek to strike a balance between the additional powers granted to GSOs and constitutional rights." The section provides that for a GSO to enter and inspect land, the GSO must be of the opinion that there "is or may be an imminent risk of bodily injury, threat to life or damage to property." It is reasonable and necessary that GSOs have these powers - being able to inspect before potential emergencies develop is crucial - but it will be important that clear policies and procedures, alongside safeguards and a dispute resolution process, are put in place with regard to their operation.”
“Is the Minister confident that any additional staffing or resourcing requirement borne by the CRU as a result of the measures in this Bill will be able to be covered by that funding arrangement? With any expansion of powers, we should always be certain that the requisite safeguards and checks and balances are in place. Robust and enforceable powers in the area of gas safety are necessary and important. There are significant expansions of power here that merit examination. For example, section 6 clarifies how and when a gas safety officer has the power to enter onto private land or premises, the way in which they can carry out their role, and their powers to preserve the scene of an incident for investigation.”
“The CRU, of course, has consulted and taken a key role in the drafting of this legislation but we need to be sure that the additional responsibilities being given to the organisation will be achievable and will not be to the detriment of other vital work that the CRU is carrying out. Can the Minister assure us that the CRU will be on equipped or resourced to carry out these additional responsibilities? Will the CRU resourcing to fulfill its duties? The CRU is funded through an industry levy on regulated entities under the Electricity Regulation Act 1999. I understand that the intention of the CRU, following consultation, is that the new small LPG reworks brought into the scope of licensing by this Bill will not be subject to that levy but will pay a €200 application fee.”
“It introduces a penal offence for natural gas and LPG undertakings for failure to conform with a safety case, puts in place a requirement for gas undertakings to hold a safety permit and safety case for any given activity they carry out and puts the gas safety framework on a statutory basis. Importantly, the Bill strengthens the powers of the CRU in a number of areas, including on the appointment of gas safety officers and gas emergency officers and on the designation of natural gas and LPG activities under the new statutory regulatory regime. It seems certain that taken in the round, this Bill will place an additional administrative burden on the work of the CRU.”
“This issue was raised at pre-legislative scrutiny when the committee's report "expressed concern regarding the relatively long period of time it has taken to propose this legislation, given that the issue it seeks to remedy was first identified in 2016". I would welcome the Minister's view on this, and would like to hear the Government's view on how we can ensure that crucial legislation dealing with public safety cannot be held up by delays. There are, of course, other elements of this Bill that are not directly concerned with the issue of non-regulated LPG networks.”
“The Government itself acknowledged this, telling us that given the imperative of public safety, this Bill is being treated as priority. Of course, the development and drafting of any legislation is complex and time-consuming. That is particularly true of a technical Bill like this one. The CRU consulted on the new regulatory regime to come into force and the Government engaged with external expertise on how to proceed. There was a pandemic and two general elections in the meantime. Even with all that in mind, what does it say about how we do legislation in this place that an important technical but nonetheless relatively narrow change to the law takes the best part of a decade to achieve? Where public safety is concerned, it is just not good enough that necessary changes like this take this long.”
“The genesis of this legislation goes back to 2016 when the CRU was alerted to the existence of approximately 70 unlicensed LPG networks serving domestic customers. That is a decade ago. This was an issue that posed real safety risks to the public. As the CRU said, there were significant safety concerns for a number of these sites. The work of the CRU mitigated those risks in the immediate term, with interventions carried out on 16% of the sites to make them safe. In other cases, a gas safety officer issued instructions to the network operators with required actions to ensure the networks conformed with the relevant safety standards within a timescale. The fact remains that the existence of unregulated gas networks in Ireland poses a real safety risk, and that is why we are debating this legislation at all.”
“We are sadly too familiar with the deadly consequences that can occur when something goes wrong. It is crucial that those who are doing the work of keeping citizens safe from those risks have the proper legislative backing they need. They need to be able to put the proper systems in place to effectively regulate and enforce safety measures. As the CRU has made clear, it is important to note that this legislation is not a reaction to any specific gas or LPG safety incident that has occurred. This is, therefore, the fruit of good pre-emptive work, identifying potential problems before they arise and stepping in to take the action needed. However, while this Bill comes to us as the result of years of good work by the CRU and others, that in itself poses a question as to why it took so long to get here.”
“I wish the Minister a happy new year. What a glamorous topic we have to kick off the new year here. We have lost our audience in the Gallery already. We might forgive our friends on the Sinn Féin benches for veering off topic slightly. This is a very technical Bill but we are talking about safety and this legislation deserves careful consideration and examination by all of us in the House. The changes contained in this Bill are important. The Labour Party is broadly supportive of them. The vital work of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities often goes under the radar - perhaps thankfully since its work is often invisible, stepping in before problems arise. However, we do not need to be reminded of the seriousness of what we are talking about here. The regulation of our gas, electricity and water networks keeps us all safe.”
“The Government can claim to be on the side of law and order, by expanding policing powers but it is beyond time that the Government finally took the crises facing our Garda seriously and addressed them. Limited retrospective facial recognition, based on existing records not databases, is one thing but live facial recognition or retrospective analysis based on large-scale databases is quite another. The Government must tread very carefully, it must pay heed to the many international examples where this has gone wrong, and it must be honest with the public about its intentions. Our front-line gardaí rely on public trust, and they deserve the support of the Government in maintaining that trust.”
“Perhaps this is a good moment to appeal to the Government to finally address the plethora of other long-standing issues with An Garda Síochána. Recruitment and retention in the service has become a crisis. Morale remains at an all-time low. We need a sustainable police force to serve communities around this country. Garda leadership have made clear they want the measures contained in this Bill, and an argument can certainly be made that they will help to solve serious crime or to locate missing persons but they will do nothing to put more gardaí on the streets in our communities or to give hard working gardaí on the front line the conditions or pay they deserve.”
“The Minister, therefore, needs to give us clarity on what exactly his intentions are in this area, beyond this Bill. In any public-facing technology it is essential that public trust is maintained through transparency, accountability and clarity. The Government has recognised this through the seven core principles in the Guidelines for the Responsible Use of Al in the Public Service. Those principles must be at the heart of the code of practice to follow this Bill. Moreover, in the same spirit of transparency and clarity, the Minister must be straight with us on what the Government's future intentions are in this area. A gradual creep of functions and uses will serve only to undermine trust in this technology and even in the institution of An Garda Síochána.”
“The Government risks playing with fire if it pushes ahead with any plans for a more expansive use of FRT than provided for in the Bill. By August next year, the EU Al Act is scheduled to come fully into force. Article 5 of that Act prohibits the use of live FRT, or real-time remote biometric identification, RBI, except if used by law enforcement for the targeted search for victims of specific crimes or missing persons, the prevention of a threat to life or a terrorist attack or the identification of a person suspected of having committed a criminal offence. This might be a welcome recognition from the EU of the risks in this area, but it still leaves fairly wide scope for the use of live FRT by police forces. It will fall to this House then to guard against any overreach.”
“It acknowledged that FRT software could significantly speed up investigations and allow for analyses that were previously impossible but it also urged caution, stating: When used in law enforcement, potential efficiency gains must be balanced against the impact on rights. A complex range of harms may potentially occur in deploying FRT including misidentifying crime suspects. Therefore, as recognised in the AI Act, used in a law enforcement context, FRT is a high-risk technology given the potential consequences of its use for individuals. "High-risk" is precisely the term here. Even if error rates in a technology are low, the consequences of an incorrect decision in the criminal justice system are potentially dire.”
“While this legislation does not contain any provision for the establishment of a national database of facial images, it seems clear that this may be coming down the tracks. I would ask the Minister to clarify the Government's intentions on this. Will the Minister be bringing forward proposals for a national database of facial images at some point? If that is the case how will such a database interact with the provisions of this Bill? How will the Minister guard against scope creep if the very limited uses permitted here come up against the temptations of a national database? It is worth noting the words of the Al advisory council in June 2024.”
“The general scheme of the Bill had been drafted in a way that would allow for comparison to databases, but the joint committee was told by the Garda Commissioner that it was not the intention of An Garda Síochána to run images against a database. The Bill now before us is clearer in making a distinction between biometric analysis, allowed under the Bill, and biometric identification based on databases, which is not allowed. That is welcome. However, he EU’s Prüm II Regulation on police co-operation has been in force since March 2024. That regulation requires member states to establish a national database of the facial images of suspects, convicted persons and, potentially, victims. It also requires the automated searching of facial images between member states.”
“Black subjects were significantly more likely to be falsely identified by the technology, with a rate of 5.5% false positives, versus just 0.04% false positives for white subjects. Significantly, that study referred to retrospective rather than live facial recognition. That shows that the high-risk nature of this tech is not limited to live FRT. The system that was examined was based within the UK’s national police database. It is welcome that the Bill reflects the recommendation of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration pre-legislative report that greater clarity was needed on the use of databases.”
“The widespread use of live FRT has been criticised by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, which said that the way the technology is being deployed by the Met is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights protections for the right to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. Just this month, a review of the use of facial recognition technology by the UK's Association of Police and Crime Commissioners found a significant "in-built bias". Its review found that "in some circumstances, it is more likely to incorrectly match black and Asian people than their white counterparts" and concluded that the technology had been deployed "without adequate safeguards".”
“They have used it for varied purposes including finding suspects of serious crimes, locating missing persons and event monitoring. They have made much use of both live facial recognition and database-driven retrospective scanning where officers run images of suspects through police, passport or immigration databases to match an identity. In the UK, the police themselves have pushed for the use of these technologies saying they are essential for effective crime fighting and to protect national security. The largest UK police force, the Metropolitan Police, has reportedly made 1,300 arrests using the technology since 2023.”
“In both of those cases, the city councils moved pre-emptively to put a ban in place before the technology was used by the police in their cities. They took that action because they were aware of the risks inherent in the technology, particularly the risks of making high-stakes errors along racial lines. They knew that using Al systems that have been trained on predominantly white faces makes the risks of misidentification for ethnic minorities unacceptably high. The Boston ban followed a 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, study that found an error rate of 35% for darker skinned women. Of course, technology has advanced significantly since 2018, but the experience of facial recognition in the UK shows that the same issues have persisted. Police forces in the UK have used facial recognition since 2017.”