Gary Gannon
Dublin Central · Social Democrats · Ireland
“I will talk about that in a couple of minutes but before I do I want to come back to some of the things the Minister of State said in his opening speech, particularly the last paragraph.”
“It will create a scenario where vulnerable people will simply not be able to get up their street for potentially three days because there will be a multitude of different providers steaming up these streets, which were never created for such large vehicles.”
“Those things should not be in competition with each other. The remunicipalisation of waste is going to cost money. That is a simple fact, but public services often should operate at a loss.”
“He engaged with the evidence and with stakeholders and came to the same determination, namely, that what we have at present for waste management services, not only in Dublin but nationally, is no longer tolerable. It has led to a system that is clearly not efficient or not suitable for the purpose intended.”
“Does the Tánaiste recognise the scale of the chaos in our criminal justice system at the moment? Thousands of cases have been adjourned. Victims will await justice. Backlogs are building. We now have habeas corpus cases taking place in the High Court. The Minister referenced my flowery language.”
“I want to acknowledge Deputy Sherlock for her work in bringing forward this Bill. We in the Social Democrats will be supporting it. It is a shame that the Minister of State is not willing to engage further than to simply vote it down on the promise that a review will be released in an unspecified time.”
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Every one of 1,100 lines we hold for Gary Gannon, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 6 of 22.
“When we go to those commemorations and speak of being part of a republican ilk, we know each one of those lines. The failures that befell babies in Bessborough were similar to those of the women and children who were incarcerated, were forced to engage in vaccine trials and forced adoptions, and were cruelly treated. They were failed but we become part of that failure when we become complicit in the cover-up and when we pour cement to ensure we can never establish the facts. We may never be able to find their little bodies. In becoming complicit, we in this Chamber become part of the continuum of failure that has not yet led to a true reckoning of ourselves as a State. As a nation, we are defined not only by what we choose to commemorate but also by how we choose to commemorate it.”
“I am conscious that this will be my last contribution, and I am sure that of others, before we head off for the Easter holidays. The Easter celebrations have a particular resonance in Ireland because we celebrate the parts of our history where we were valiant. We will probably visit commemoration sites and read testimony on walls about a nation that proudly professed that it would cherish all of its children equally. I hope those of us at those commemorations can reflect on the motion before us and think about the 923 children who were not held to that standard. They are children whose names and the fact they existed is known through birth certs, but we know nothing of how they died and where they were laid to rest. We all know that history is a continuum.”
“This is not just about medals or world cups. It is actually about giving the capacity to young people in disadvantaged communities to play at a scale experienced by other kids in more affluent areas. That is why the sports capital programme needs to involve direct State investment into infrastructure. Anything else is a failure of the same people we will be celebrating tonight and those who will come after them.”
“The heart of this issue for me is not about the success. Very few children will ever reach the scale of Troy Parrott or Kellie Harrington. All too often I have to take a phone call from a coach who is dealing with kids who are oftentimes coming from overcrowded and disadvantaged backgrounds, to tell me that their pitch booking has been cancelled or they do not have playing facilities. The inability to play on a pitch has an impact on their ability to be inspired tonight by somebody like Troy Parrott and take up a ball and head out on a Saturday morning. There is a disparity in simply being able to access sport. That impacts in a way that will not only be felt in medals, trophies, buses or jerseys but in the way that kids will not have access to a role model, to be just able to go out and release the energy kids get to do in sport.”
“When will the Government will commit to direct State investment in public sporting infrastructure in disadvantaged urban communities? A situation where Dublin's inner city, north and south, does not have an 11-a-side pitch is not sustainable.”
“The communities that already have facilities get more and the communities that have nothing remain locked out. That is exactly why golf clubs in this State apply at for this funding exactly three times the rate of boxing clubs, not because golf matters more but because golf clubs and the like have the cultural capital to access the system. The Pobal deprivation index was designed to weight applications towards disadvantaged areas but an application that has not been submitted cannot be weighted. A community with no land, no lease and no 21-year title cannot be prioritised. Tonight we will cheer on Troy Parrott and the rest of the team and tomorrow morning the Government will return to a funding model that makes the next Troy Parrot less likely, not more likely.”
“The main Government parties have invested over €1 billion in sport since 2018 and that gap has not changed in two years. Where is the money going? The Parliamentary Budget Office has answered that question clearly. Dublin received €26.50 per person under the sports capital programme. The national average is €54. County Leitrim received over €100 per head. This is not about urban versus rural; it is about fairness. The most densely populated county in the State with the highest concentration of disadvantaged communities gets less than half the national average per head and we know exactly why. To access the sports capital programme for capital work, communities need to own their land outright or hold a lease of at least 21 years' duration.”
“There is not a single full-sized football pitch available to children in Dublin's inner city, north or south. That is something I have raised on numerous occasions in the House. The only full-sized pitch in the locality at all is Croke Park and that very much remains behind closed doors for most people in this Chamber. That is a predictable result of a funding model that was never designed to reach communities like Dublin's north inner city. The ESRI identified nearly 20 years ago that sport funding in Ireland is structurally regressive, flowing to clubs that already have facilities in communities that already participate at scale. Today, the Irish Sports Monitor shows a 19-point gap in participation between higher and lower socioeconomic groups.”
“I will start on football by wishing our lads the very best of luck tonight. I will also stay on the issue of sport more generally because in that welcome, we see a disparity between those who have and those who have not in this country. One of the players carrying the hopes of the nation on his back tonight is Troy Parrott. Troy comes from Portland Place in the heart of Dublin's north inner city, a community that has produced extraordinary supporting talent, not because of what the State has provided but in spite of what it has not. We are very good in this country at celebrating our sporting heroes with the jerseys, the flags and even, I hope, the open top buses soon. What we are less good at is being honest about the gap between how loudly we celebrate these athletes and how we little we invested in the communities that produced them.”
“All the while we talk of that, however, Russian tanks still go through Ukraine, Russian drones are still firing on cities and Russian missiles are still landing in Ukrainian cities. I would like to see a plan. I would like to see the Minister lay out to us what is actually the plan for the payment for the status of the Ukrainian community, whose members have contributed hugely in their friendship and in how they have engaged in our communities, towns and villages. They need some degree of certainty, and that needs to be provided by the Minister's Department. We need more than rhetoric.”
“Yes, I listened to the Deputy's contribution. The Social Democrats will support the continuation of the payment because, imperfect as it may be, it is better than the alternatives that exist. The Government does not seem to have a plan at all for the ending of the temporary directive. I listened to the Minister of State's opening contribution earlier and he talked with such vagueness about the ending of the temporary directive: something will be planned and something will happen. However, we heard the exact same speech last year and probably the year before that. There will come a time when the temporary protection directive comes to an end. It is scheduled for March 2027.”
“Where do the thousands of people who are still here in search of sanctuary while a war still rages in their country go? I genuinely do not know where they would go. I certainly do not want them to go onto the street. I do not want them to go into private accommodation. Having them in families getting payments of €600 therefore makes sense to me. I do not really know what the alternative being suggested here is.”
“The Government has made these decisions. This payment is reflected far better than the giving of millions of euro over to private operators, which I am sure the Deputy will also not be in agreement with. As regards the families I have met who have benefited from a payment such as this, I hosted a meeting in the audiovisual room a couple of weeks ago with the Irish Red Cross. There were a number of families present who had come to Ireland. One woman, whose daughter is now five, has been here since her daughter was one. She is in her school, she was in her crèche, she is perfectly integrated in our communities and she has an amazing relationship with the family that have been able to host them. It is very difficult for me to say I would like to take that away. What happens then?”
“Questions have been raised about the data with which the Irish Red Cross demonstrated that over 91% of the people providing accommodation under the ARP scheme had never been registered with the Residential Tenancies Board and had never been private providers, but that is data from the Irish Red Cross. I appreciate that not everybody took part in it but this year and last year I met numerous host families in Ireland who have opened up their doors to Ukrainian families who have become part of the make-up of their communities and their households. The scheme is imperfect, but there is no perfection here. In fact, it is all horror. I listened to Deputy Carthy's contribution and have seen his amendment. We will certainly consider it, but I did not see what we would do differently in that regard. We are not in charge here.”
“I reflect on the fact that private accommodation operators who entered an agreement with the State but provided no accommodation to a single refugee or asylum seeker in the country have been paid millions in settlements in recent years. I reflect on the fact that there are people who have come to this country in search of sanctuary who were placed on the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains in all sorts of weather. We have seen tents on the Grand Canal. I reflect on the fact that a scheme like this, imperfect as it may be, also sees huge numbers of people who came to this country following a horrific invasion of their country placed in the homes of Irish people.”
“The Social Democrats will be supporting the extension of the accommodation recognition payment from 27 March. We would like to do so at its current rate. I am conscious that in his contribution, Deputy Carthy spoke about the Opposition needing to reflect on our continued support of this scheme and we do. I reflect constantly. I reflect on the fact that today a court case was taken by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which demonstrated in a court of law that over 2,500 asylum seekers were forced to defecate on the street, such was the lack of accommodation and how horrendously this is being handled by the Government.”
“There is a pernicious, insidious level of criminality and exploitation of children in this country and the Minister is not in front of it.”
“I often talk about where his priorities lie. For example, last September, the State flew 79 gardaí on a deportation flight that had 24 people on it. Is there a Member who would not like to see 79 gardaí somewhere in their constituencies at any one point? No, the Minister's priorities were for that at a cost of €500,000 to the State, excluding Garda overtime, at the same time that police stations are lying empty, community parks are being closed and children as young as six are being groomed into criminality. Where is the focus? We have seen deaths of children from arson attacks and I have not seen an appropriate response. The Minister spoke about a high-visibility plan for Dublin city. I walk down O'Connell Street every morning, including today and at night. I did not see a single garda there.”
“Such is the extent to which criminality has taken hold in that park, dealers are using a saw to cut the slides because they do not want children and families in there given that is one of the places where they like to be able to sell their drugs. That is what happening. It is happening in Diamond Park and in Liberty Park. It is not only happening in parks in the inner city, it is also happening in St. Anne's Park and the length and breadth of Dublin city. That is happening without any degree of Garda presence or intervention. It is so insidious. These are the tactics - shut down public resources and squares so they cannot be used so that gangland figures who are exploiting young people into crime could take advantage of them. There is not a concerted effort on the Minister's part to tackle it, combat it and get in front of this.”
“When a child is groomed into criminality through physical or sexual exploitation and that child has to become a runner of drugs or stand on a corner, it is very difficult to convey the extent to which that is so insidious in so many communities because gangland crime has adjusted. Gangland criminals have learned that the resourcing of the State will come when noise is made. There has been a transformation on the streets. That transformation is being felt in the destruction and annihilation of a child's life. The manifestations of that are felt in parks, for example, in many constituencies. In my constituency, the Diamond Park off Gardiner Street is about a three-minute walk from O'Connell Street.”
“I acknowledge Deputy Kelly and the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion and the diligence that Deputy Kelly has brought to the committee. This morning, the Irish Penal Reform Trust published a report that every Member should read before they speak, especially the Minister. It found that children are being drawn into criminality from the age of six - not 16, not 12, but six years of age. When the Minister opened the debate by talking about the fact that we have not had a gangland murder in whatever length of time, of course that is welcome. I know what it feels like when bullets make loud noises that everybody responds to.”
“The Minister's opening statement started off in a way that was almost expected. He acknowledged the outstanding work of An Garda Síochána and phrased it in a way that somehow what everybody else was about to say was somehow challenging An Garda Síochána, as opposed to challenging his Department, his policies and his responsibility. Across this House, all contributors have said that An Garda Síochána does incredible work, but that work is being impacted and made more difficult by the policies, resourcing and the inability to listen to those on the ground whom we ask to serve. That is the Minister's and his Department's failure. My contribution will be aimed towards his Department, not any individual member.”
“Cancer already takes enough from people and their families. The system should not add to that burden. Before I conclude, I acknowledge the healthcare workers who do immense and incredible work. People often share their stories and talk about the great service they received from individuals within the system. This motion is incredibly reasonable. It is timely and necessary and we support it. I know the Minister of State supports it in theory, but we need follow-through from the Government as a whole.”
“I live less than half a kilometre away from the Mater Hospital. It is all too frequent that I get a phone call from a relative, a friend or someone asking if there is any free parking available in the locality. You often see people parking far away from the Mater Hospital and walking to it because of the cost of car parking. Some of these are people in the middle of cancer treatment. That is why the practical measures in this motion matter. We need to abolish hospital car-parking charges, increase medical card thresholds in line with GP visit cards, properly fund discretionary medical cards and place Sláintecare waiting time targets into law so that access to care is not optional but guaranteed and can be vindicated through the courts if that basic necessity is not met through the allocation of budget resources.”
“We learned that BreastCheck only screened 75% of its anticipated numbers in 2025, having already accounted for a 30% drop-off in invitations. We know that the women least likely to be reached are often those who need it most. We cannot allow inequality in outcomes to deepen because of a failure to invest in infrastructure, equipment and community-level screening. That is exactly how a postcode lottery becomes permanent. Alongside all of this, there is the crippling financial cost of diagnosis. People are not just dealing with their illness; they are also dealing with the travel costs, car-parking charges, time off work, childcare and bills. In my own constituency, the operator of the Mater Hospital car park charges €15 a day. That is an outrageous cost to someone attending daily for treatment.”
“In our role, how often do we knock on a person’s door to be told such a story? It happens too often in my constituency. The most recent implementation review found that only one of 23 national cancer strategy objectives had been met. Nearly a decade later, we are below the EU average for MRI, CT and PET scanners. This is not pressure on the system; it is a systematic, documented failure of investment and follow-through. We know that cancer does not impact communities evenly. In more deprived areas, including parts of the north inner city which I represent, there are significantly higher rates of lung and cervical cancer. Those communities have historically been under-served by screening and early detection.”
“We need a new national cancer strategy for 2027 to 2037 backed with proper ring-fenced multi-annual funding, including an additional €30 million a year in new development funding, as the motion sets out. Cancer touches every family in this country. People should not be left waiting when they are diagnosed, at a time already filled with so much stress and uncertainty, but that is exactly what is happening. In 2025, 45% of breast cancer surgeries did not happen on time, while 39% of lung cancer surgeries and 61% of prostate cancer surgeries were delayed in 2024. It is not just surgery: 23% of radiotherapy patients and 15% of chemotherapy patients did not receive treatments within their target timeframes either. Those are not small gaps. Behind every one of those statistics, there are real people who have been left waiting when time matters.”
“I welcome the motion put down by Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin. I acknowledge the personal testimony shared by Members throughout the debate. It is really appreciated and I know it will matter to a lot of people. Today’s motion is very timely, coming just a week after Daffodil Day when people across the country showed solidarity with those affected by cancer. People across this House showed the same solidarity by wearing daffodils and meeting local cancer survivors and advocates here in Leinster House 2000. I am very conscious that when representatives of the Irish Cancer Society come here, we all take pictures and share them but they expect us to take decisions. The decisions they are asking for are reflected in today’s motion. After the failure to deliver the last strategy, there can be no more delay.”
“So many families in so many walks of life in Ireland have asked these simple questions. What happened on that day? Why has nobody been held responsible? The families of the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings are asking for the exact same thing that we are potentially delivering today, which is some degree of co-operation and truth from a jurisdiction that is not their own. For the sake of all those families, it is incumbent on us all that we demonstrate the urgency and resolve to give them the truth, however long they may have waited and had to fight. Everybody deserves to know what happened on days when their loved ones were lost, lives were changed, and cities and communities were torn apart.”
“For the families of the victims of the Omagh bombing, this is not about politics, legislation or frameworks, but is simply about the truth. It is about whether this State played any part, through action or inaction, in what happened on that hideous day. It is about whether after nearly 30 years we finally have the courage to find out. The families deserve that. Michael Gallagher deserves that. Aoibheann deserves that as do Eimear and Evelyn, lives that never even got to begin. When we speak about the brutal and horrific tragedy in Omagh, it is incumbent on me also to mention the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. I have met families living in my constituency who experienced the most profound tragedy on the day of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. They lost loved ones and were left disfigured. They also still wait for truth.”
“The families of the victims of the Omagh bombing are citizens of this island and they deserve that the State bring the full weight of its co-operation, its institutions and its political will on their behalf. We in the Social Democrats welcome the Bill, but we will judge it not by what it enables but by what it delivers. I want to put three specific questions on the record. Will the Minister commit to a timeline for the completion of full Irish State disclosure to the inquiry? Will the Government publicly encourage former officeholders who hold relevant evidence to participate and not merely make mechanisms available? Will the Government set out its position on the special advocate's judicial review and on the rights of families to meaningful representation at closed hearings?”
“However, it means that this House bears a responsibility today to ask questions that would ordinarily arise at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage. That is what I will try to do. I encourage the Minister to engage with these questions substantively as the Bill progresses. Complexity cannot become an excuse. Two jurisdictions, sensitive material, legal constraints and constitutional limits are all real but none of that is a reason for delay or half-measures. Every delay is felt by the families. Every bureaucratic obstacle is a reminder that they are still waiting. We are a Republic and claim to value accountability, truth and the rights of citizens.”
“I understand this is constitutionally necessary because we cannot compel sworn testimony before a foreign inquiry. The law has limits in that regard. Will the Government actively encourage relevant former office-holders to participate? Will it make clear that non-participation where someone holds potentially relevant evidence is not an acceptable posture? Creating the mechanism, and leaving its uptake entirely to an individual's conscience, should not be sufficient. If former officeholders have relevant evidence, they should give it, and this Government should say so plainly. This Bill was granted a waiver from pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. That was the right call, given the urgency of the legislation, and I do not criticise it for a moment.”
“It simply cannot be right that a father who forced this inquiry into existence through decades of legal struggle could be excluded from the room when the most sensitive evidence about what the states knew is being heard. This Bill does not and cannot address that dispute, which is a matter for the courts. However, the House should put it on the record that the rights of families to meaningful participation in the process should never be negotiable. I ask the Minister to clarify the Government's position in this regard. I move to the voluntariness question. The consent requirement in the Bill runs through the entire mechanism for former office-holders of any kind; not just former Ministers but also former Garda Commissioners, senior Defence Forces officers and departmental officials. Any of them can decline to give evidence.”
“That is to the State's credit but the process is still at an early stage. For families who have waited nearly 30 years, early stage simply is not good enough. The second issue is the special advocates dispute, which is a live issue before the courts. Michael Gallagher is judicially reviewing Lord Turnbull's ruling that the inquiry has no power to appoint special advocates. The latter exist to represent the interests of excluded parties at closed hearings held in private because of national security sensitivities. The argument being made on behalf of the Gallagher family is a serious one, namely, that without special advocates, families could be entirely shut out of hearings where, in effect, findings about state failures are made.”
“It is important to be honest about what this Bill does and does not do. Two issues sit alongside the legislation and cannot be ignored. The first is the delay in proceedings. The inquiry's evidential hearings examining the days immediately before and after the bombing were due to begin on 9 March but have been pushed back six months to 24 September. The families were informed of the delay on 6 March, three days before hearings were due to begin. Part of the reason for the delay is the sheer volume of state material still being processed. The lead counsel to the inquiry has confirmed the full Irish disclosure will not be complete until June. I want to be fair here. The inquiry's own counsel has praised the efforts of the State and An Garda Síochána in meeting deadlines.”
“This legislation creates a mechanism to allow sworn oral evidence to be taken in this jurisdiction before a High Court judge from members and former members of An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces, senior officials and former Ministers. I absolutely welcome that. Without their co-operation, the inquiry simply cannot do its job and, without the inquiry doing its job, the families will not get the answers they deserve and for which they have fought for so long. I note the architecture that preceded this Bill. It includes the memorandum of understanding on disclosure of state materials, the data protection regulations that enable transfer of sensitive personal data and the directives to the Garda Commissioner to support co-operation. They were meaningful steps and they deserve acknowledgement.”
“Its terms of reference include alleged intelligence-sharing failures between the UK Government and the Irish authorities in the period leading up to the bombing. That is not a peripheral issue. In fact, it goes to the heart of why the co-operation of the State matters so much. There may have been information held on this side of the Border. There may have been decisions made or not made at the highest levels of the State. I certainly am not making any allegations of such but I am saying the question exists, is live and it goes through the thoughts every day of family members who lost their loved ones in Omagh. It is a question that must be answered. That is precisely why the voluntary participation of former office-holders is not an abstract procedural matter. It is potentially central to getting to the truth.”
“That is what citizenship looks like at its most determined. We owe it to him and to every family affected to match his determination with our own. The Omagh bombing inquiry is examining whether this atrocity could have been prevented. It is a profound and difficult question but a very necessary one. For the families, the question has never gone away as to whether something more could have been done, whether the bombing could have been stopped, whether lives could have been saved and whether those murderers could have been prevented from doing their dastardly deed. To answer that question, the inquiry needs access to evidence, co-operation and transparency. Crucially, it needs the full participation of the State. We need to be honest about what the inquiry is actually examining.”
“As we discuss this Bill, we must be very clear that the process must always come back to people. Michael Gallagher's son Aiden was killed that day. He was 21 years old. Michael Gallagher did not just grieve; he fought. For 25 years, he fought through the courts, against institutions and against every obstacle placed in front of him. His legal challenge produced the 2021 High Court ruling that found there was a plausible case that the bombing could have been prevented and that directed the establishment of a human rights-compliant investigation. Without Michael Gallagher, there would be no inquiry. It is important to state that clearly in the House today. The inquiry we are legislating to support exists because a bereaved father refused to accept that either state could simply move on.”
“The deaths of Avril Monaghan, her 21-month-old daughter Maura and her mother, Mary Grimes, saw three generations killed in one horrific moment. It was Mary Grimes's 66th birthday that day. Avril was 33 years old and heavily pregnant with twins, Eimear and Evelyn, whose lives never even got a chance to begin. Avril's daughter Aoibheann put it more powerfully than any of us ever could when she said: The pictures of Eimear and Evelyn's scan are a reminder of the futures that never became a reality. The loss that we as a family have experienced cannot be measured and there is no replacement for the time we would have had with our mam, Maura, Eimear, Evelyn and granny. That line alone should stop every single one of us in our tracks because it shows how the Omagh bombing took entire futures.”
“Before I discuss the legislation and the legal mechanisms of co-operation between states, it is important to pause and remember exactly what we are about today. This is by no means just another Bill. It is about the 29 people and two unborn children killed in Omagh, the 220 people injured and the families who, nearly three decades later, are still searching for answers. It can be too easy for atrocities to become a moment in history, a date or an event. That should never be allowed to happen. For the families, this atrocity is their present and something they carry with them every single day. Sometimes the scale of loss is so overwhelming that it risks becoming abstract. We must never allow that to happen. I will name just a few of the victims of that day. Alan Radford died helping his mother to do the weekly shopping.”
“The numbers the Minister gave me for retirements for the past five years are fairly consistent; they are in the 400s and the high 300s. If we have greater capacity for retirements, are we doing any exit interviews with gardaí who are leaving? What measures are we taking? Obviously, it is welcome if a person wishes to postpone their retirement beyond the age of 55. That is their choice and I can understand that. However, there are many who will not want to do that and many who have not done so.”
“I would like to hear more about the recruitment and the capacity for expansion, particularly around Templemore. We reach a particular limit when the Garda does recruitment drives. A lot of people put themselves forward but such is the level of time it takes for the training, which is obviously necessary, and for vetting, which we have seen huge problems with, I do not believe we are bringing enough people through to cover the potential retirements that are on the horizon. That figure of 1,700 eligible is different from the figure the Minister got through parliamentary questions two years ago, which there was a great emphasis on. How is that mitigated because at different points morale in the Garda goes up and goes down?”
“Previously, the Minister talked about activating the Garda Reserve and the expansion of Templemore but, as he said himself, there is potential for a retirement crisis on the horizon. What is the Government doing to mitigate that?”
“I thank the Minister for his response. There was one part of the question he did not answer, which was the number of gardaí eligible to retire within the next three years. That is a figure of particular concern to me. When the Minister wrote about this issue in 2024, it was of particular concern to him. At that time, he talked about nearly 50% of the force becoming eligible for retirement by 2028. The figure he had in that article in 2024 was 6,400 gardaí becoming eligible for retirement. That was because in the late 1980s and 1990s, there was a large recruitment drive and the majority of those gardaí are now coming towards retirement age. The genuine concern is that the number of people we are recruiting to the Garda will not be able to match the number of gardaí who are reaching the age of eligibility for retirement.”
“I want to ask the Minister the number of Garda members who have retired or resigned from An Garda Síochána in each of the past five years, whether his Department has carried out any analysis of the reasons for those departures, the number of members currently eligible to retire within the next three years and the measures being taken to improve retention within the force.”
“I ask him to work with organisations that can demonstrate best practice in oversight and to make sure that the Oireachtas justice committee has full sight of everything the Minister is proposing at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage. I can absolutely see why a measure like this is necessary but the world may also be very different in ten or 20 years' time. A Government ten years from now may be very different from the one we have now or next and may have a different attitude, so the careful drafting of this legislation is important.”
“I understand the rationale for a measure like this. I understand that the legislation the Minister is working off is from 1993 and its drafters would never have foreseen the world we are in now but we need to move carefully and cautiously with a measure such as this. Some of the technology being referenced here might be developed by companies such as Pegasus, for example. In other jurisdictions, Pegasus spyware has been used as a way of monitoring political opposition and has been used unlawfully against journalists. I understand the rationale for this and we are in a very different world, but I ask the Minister, when he brings forward this legislation, to respect the process by which we can apply the right level of scrutiny.”
“What is working and what is very clearly not working? What do we need to do differently and what can we do differently? Do we really need to imprison women whose children will have to visit them and be traumatised by that prospect? There are a lot of things we can do if we had a vision for something very different. Clearly, what we have is not only not working, it has been described as being tantamount to torture.”