Matt Carthy
Cavan-Monaghan · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“I move amendment No. 1: To insert after "on 2nd July, 2026": "and: further calls on the Government to provide that the Accommodation Recognition Payment (ARP) scheme shall apply only to: — existing recipients with respect to the beneficiaries of temporary protection currently benefitting from the scheme where those beneficiaries of tempor…”
“10 reads, "In page 5, line 31, after “section 2” to insert “or section 3”." Section 3 criminalises recording, sharing or publishing an intimate image without consent where it seriously interferes with a person's privacy or causes alarm, distress or harm to them.”
“In terms of the legislation, as well as the breadth of the issues covered in the Bill, the other problem is the number of amendments the Minister has introduced on every Stage on new and unrelated matters that just have not been discussed in this House at all and will not get discussed here because of guillotines being applied and the Min…”
“It is not an additional punishment to be included on the register. As has been said, this is just about having a mechanism whereby the constitutional diktat that justice should be done in public is actually made available. This is not an additional punishment. It is actually a protection for others.”
“We must bear in mind that the vast majority of domestic violence offences and abuses never make their way to court. Most of them never result in a complaint. When complaints are made, most of them never see a file being sent to the DPP. Even when that happens, most of them never actually make it to court.”
“She made the point that when a woman, in the majority cases we are talking about women, goes to a Garda station to make a complaint about domestic violence you can virtually bet your life that it is not the first instance of domestic violence that she has encountered.”
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“In that regard, we recognise there needs to be a level of discretion but it is our view that discretion should be in the hands of the courts, not in the hands of the agency. There should be a very clear level playing field in terms of where these decisions are made. As in all cases, once Tusla brings an application, it will be for the courts to adjudicate but there is a real concern by campaigners and by the people who have brought us to this point that you could have a scenario whereby one parent is responsible for the murder or manslaughter of another parent and Tusla, in whatever wisdom or logic, decides it does not believe there is a case to be brought to remove guardianship rights from that parent. There is no mechanism for appeal in that regard.”
“There could be a situation where Tusla decides, via one person or very small number of people, that this law should not be applicable in a situation whereby somebody who has killed another parent and is still considered under law a legal guardian of a child who has been deprived of a parent by that individual and that that might remain legally the position at the behest of a single institution. Therefore, we believe there is a need for absolute clarity in terms of the law and to ensure there is no ambiguity. As the Minister knows, we have a further amendment that clarifies one of the areas he has raised and it is a valid point whereby somebody could have been convicted but on the basis of all the discernible evidence it could be proven that they had been a victim of domestic abuse.”
“A conviction for the murder or manslaughter of a co-guardian is in itself sufficient evidence of a fundamental breach of the duty to the child and no further threshold need apply, so removing the discretion ensures consistency, protects the child and avoids the risk the legislation becomes ineffective in practice. I raised this with the Minister on Committee Stage. My appeal was that he would either accept this amendment or provide another formula of words that would be acceptable to him because there is a concern in terms of the veracity of Tusla in these matters. We had Tusla representatives before the committee yesterday. Essentially, it appears that in practice this will operate with a single social worker making a determination. That is concerning.”
“When he attended the Oireachtas committee on justice yesterday, I said only half in jest that he has a better attendance rate in this place than some Members do. Everybody in the House, including the Minister, will acknowledge the reason this Bill is before us at all is largely down to the efforts of David and his family. Their efforts in memory of Valerie are commendable. The amendment seeks to strengthen section 12C by requiring Tusla to apply to the court in every case following a conviction and by requiring that to be done within three months. As it stands, there is a discretionary test I am concerned about that could limit applications where reasonable cause is not established and that contradicts the stated intention that the application would be made in all cases.”
“I move amendment No. 1: In page 4, lines 18 to 32, to delete all words from and including “(1) Where—” in line 18 down to and including line 32 and substitute the following: “(1) Where a person (in this section referred to as the ‘convicted guardian’) who is a guardian of a child is convicted in the State of the murder or manslaughter of a person who was, at the time of the commission of the offence concerned, another guardian of the child concerned the Child and Family Agency shall, as soon as practicable but not later than 3 months after the conviction or any extension of that period under subsection (2), apply to the court in that behalf for an order under subsection (3).”. I welcome Mr. David French to the Visitors Gallery.”
“Is there an online portal, web app or similar available to each of them? Will the Minister put into the hands of each service provider a comprehensive but accessible and straightforward guide as to their obligations and how they can be best complied with?”
“There will be very little time between the enactment of the legislation and the obligation being placed on service providers, and that is entirely a result of the approach of the Minister and Department to this, bringing it forward late in the day and not being able to answer questions. This is again rushed legislation from the Department of justice. I appreciate there is a Department webpage in relation to registering as a service provider but there is a significant body of work necessary to ensure that SMEs that will be affected will be adequately supported. I hope the Minister of State will accept this amendment but, on the off-chance she is not going to accept one of my amendments, I ask that she give a definitive answer on the number of service providers in Ireland at this stage that are going to be caught up in this legislation.”
“I move amendment No. 7: In page 17, between lines 3 and 4, to insert the following: “(2) Notwithstanding this section, the Minister shall, no later than 31 July, publish guidance notes for small to medium sized service providers to promote compliance with their obligations under this Act.” This is, again, a simple insertion. It goes back to the earlier point on the need to actually support small and medium enterprises which will receive a minority of the requests but for which this will have the biggest impact and implication, as acknowledged by the Department itself. We know all service providers are going to have to comply with the directive and regulation by August.”
“The provisions around the annual reports were very detailed precisely because the Houses of the Oireachtas wanted to set out very clearly the information they expect in a report. If we do not actually set out what it is we are looking for in an annual report, invariably what ends up happening is that people compare one annual report with another to see what is missing. That is not the way we should be commencing this process at all.”
“First, there is a requirement for the Minister to receive information from the new body. Is the Minister obliged or committed to publishing that or sharing it with the rest of the Oireachtas and to being answerable in respect of it? Second, the Minister said the body will be subject to freedom of information, FOI, requests. That is not an appropriate mechanism for transparency. Most of the reasons FOIs have to be submitted in the first place are because there is a lack of transparency around a particular matter, obviously personal issues excepted. I do not know why we would put a stipulation on a statutory body to produce an annual report without any detail as to what should be in it. I recall legislation I dealt with directly regarding the Agri Food Regulator and another body I was dealing with.”
“I welcome that the Minister of State has put on the record that she believes the information set out in this amendment should be provided in the annual report. That is important. However, I think there is a tacit acknowledgement in what the Minister of State has said that there will be no obligation whatsoever on the new entity to actually provide that because it has been given direction by the legislation to produce an annual report with no direction as to what should be in it. It is like asking 20 children in a class to write a report on their trip to the zoo, which could result in 20 very different versions of what was actually important apart from, hopefully, all of them agreeing that it was enjoyed by all. A couple of things need to be said in respect of accountability.”
“I assume this body will be the same and the Department will again refuse to answer any parliamentary questions, so we will be dependent on the annual report to actually provide information not only to Members of the Oireachtas, but also to members of the public. Therefore, we need to ensure that the annual report is actually detailed and provides the type of information that would be useful for us in analysing the effectiveness of this body.”
“Maybe the Minister of State can put it on her to-do list. It is what I would call the refusal and evasiveness of her Department when dealing with any parliamentary questions. For virtually every body under the Department’s authority at this point, we get responses back to parliamentary questions saying that the Minister will not be held accountable and will not provide any information. It is not the same in every other Department. Many other Departments will provide information or, at a minimum, seek out information for the benefit of Deputies. However, the Department of justice has got to a point where it is just refusing point blank. I would say it probably makes as many refusals to parliamentary questions as it gives answers.”
“Paragraph (e) would likewise provide a view about whether the office was meeting its obligations. Paragraph (f) is included to provide insight into the efficiencies and effectiveness of the office, how a large organisation like this can develop and the bill that the Irish taxpayer will be expected to foot for this facet of European co-operation. I can almost pre-empt that the Minister of State will say that this is not necessary and it is open to Members to submit parliamentary questions, but given the concerns about the potential annual costs of this new body, I believe it is important that, from day 1, we set out that the organisation will have to report on these matters in an annual report so that there can be transparency and scrutiny. We know that there is an issue with the Minister of State's Department.”
“Apart from all of these things, we know that many questions have not been answered but we do not know much else. This amendment is intended to ensure that, at a minimum, the Oireachtas can be assured that there will be an annual report that will lay out how the office is functioning so that we can be kept abreast on an ongoing basis. Paragraph (c) is necessary so that we have a view of the number of instances where the office is engaging in what might be called corrective behaviour rather than levelling fines against service providers in breach of their obligations. Paragraph (d) would help to inform how the office is functioning, if its decisions are actually standing up to scrutiny and, crucially, the impact, if any, it is having on the Courts Service.”
“We also know that the Department seemed to think, or at least provided evidence, that the impact on the courts would be minimal and the Courts Service itself has said that limited data is available about the number of cases that may arise after commencement. That is probably a diplomatic way of saying that we have not a clue. It goes on to suggest that the Department's projections may prove optimistic. I am quite concerned that after the summer, when this comes into effect, combined with the as yet unknown outworkings of the reform to barristers' pay and so on, and when we have the EU Presidency putting pressure on the ability of gardaí to attend courts, we may be facing a substantial backlog in the courts, even worse than is already the case.”
“Going back to our infamous committee meeting, which I know was before the Minister of State was appointed, we expected the meeting to be a short, technical briefing, but it raised serious concerns among members about legislation that we thought would be fairly straightforward. One question that was asked that could not be answered related to the potential scale of what this body could cost the Irish taxpayer annually. Somebody mentioned that we were kicking off with a €2.8 million budget this year, which would provide for 29 staff and associated costs. We also know that there are suggestions that we could end up with 150 staff in this body. We are told that the State is expected to receive in excess of 300,000 orders each year.”
“I move amendment No. 6: In page 16, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following: “(4) Such an annual report shall contain statistical data in relation to— (a) the number of orders which were notified to the Director, (b) the number of orders that were refused, (c) the number of agreements entered into with service providers under subsection 40(1) and the status thereof by category, (d) the number of instances whereby a court confirmed, set aside, replaced, or remitted either the decision or financial penalty of an adjudicating officer, (e) the number of instances whereby the Director failed to sanction or refuse an order within the required timeframe, and (f) the whole-time equivalent allocation, by cost, by role, including the data category requested, the addressees, the situation (emergency case or not), grounds for refusal by category, number of court appearances, by country of origin.”.”
“Had this paragraph (g) about the Data Protection Commission been included in the first draft, is there reason to believe that the Data Protection Commission would have objected to it? If so, perhaps we could get a sense of the thinking about why the Data Protection Commission would not want to be included in the legislation in this manner.”
“It does not really. I understand that the Minister of State is only new in the role and I do not expect her to know the details of that. I think she is confirming that there was no actual physical engagement and this was all done via emails or written submission. The question I asked was whether the question was put to the Data Protection Commission. Is it the case that all agencies received an email with the draft Bill, telling them to highlight any concerns they may have with it, and if one did not come back, it was assumed that the Minister could get up and say that agency did not identify any need for additional powers? For example, did each of the State bodies referenced in the legislation, off its own bat, request to be included in the legislation or were those bodies in the initial drafts?”
“Were there formal sit-down engagements and, if so, was the Minister or a Minister of State present for any of those engagements, or was it all done through written correspondence?”
“It would be useful if the Minister of State could outline in greater detail exactly what was involved in the consultation with the Data Protection Commission. It has been referenced both at the committee and here in the Dáil that there was such engagement with the commission. We have been told that it did not see itself as the appropriate enforcement authority and, as we have heard from the Minister of State just now, that it did not seek additional provision in the legislation. Was the question asked of the Data Protection Commission as to whether such a provision would be helpful or potentially useful in the outworking of this legislation? Without knowing the context of the engagement, it is too simplistic to say the departmental officials spoke to people in the commission about the legislation and they never mentioned this issue.”
“However, if the Department engaged with the commission at one point, as acknowledged by the officials, that suggests it believed at that point that the commission might be the appropriate body to deal with these matters. That surely is an acknowledgement that there is an overlap of functions or at least a relevance. Given everything we have already spoken about, it would be a welcome assurance for the legislation at least to formally facilitate engagement between the two bodies even if it did not mandate what that might look like at this time. These are mainly technical amendments but they are important ones. I urge the Government to accept them.”
“5 does something very similar in facilitating the office of the director to enter into an information-sharing agreement with the Data Protection Commission in the same way it can do so with those other offices. There are significant implications for data protection in Ireland arising from this Bill. To some extent, we will, in effect, be ceding sovereignty to courts in other jurisdictions. That is why the facilitation I am proposing should be included. At the committee hearing, the departmental officials stated that the Data Protection Commission did not consider it appropriate that it be the enforcement authority, and the Department accepted that. I, too, am willing to accept it.”
“I move amendment No. 4: In page 15, between lines 25 and 26, to insert the following: "(g) the Data Protection Commission.". Like the previous amendments, these are simple proposals. Amendment No. 4 seeks to facilitate the office of the director of criminal justice international co-operation in making representations to or assisting the Data Protection Commission, DPC, in regard to the e-evidence package in the same way the legislation provides for such co-operation in the case of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, Coimisiún na Meán, the Corporate Enforcement Authority, Fiosrú, An Garda Síochána and the Revenue Commissioners. Amendment No.”
“The Minister of State says this is EU regulations and directives and there is no ability to amend it but Ministers always seem to forget or ignore when talking about EU regulations and directives in this House that the Government signed up to them at an EU level. Any gaps and failings are failings and gaps on the part of the Government. That needs to be recognised. Amendment No. 3 is important. I will press it but will not call a vote. I will call a vote on amendment No. 2 because it is really important there be provision in the legislation, not to allow companies escape the provisions of the directive, whose importance we acknowledge, but to recognise this will place an administrative and cost burden on some companies that will not be an issue for the larger companies.”
“The legal practitioners on the committee raised the most serious concerns in respect of this provision. While acknowledging provisions within the e-evidence package, we believe there needs to be strong, robust provisions in any legislation to ensure information will only be provided where any alleged offence constitutes an offence under Irish criminal law. That requires an explicit provision in domestic law. The Minister of State described amendment No. 2 as very broad and virtually meaningless but it would insert a guidance to the new agency. That is something that has been included in other legislation, where there are guidances to ensure one of the agency's roles is not to overburden a particular sector.”
“My apologies. I meant to speak to amendment No. 3. It is actually sometimes useful to get the Minister's response before speaking to an amendment. I would encourage the Minister of State to look back at the Oireachtas justice committee. There was quite substantive discussion with officials on dual criminality, particularly how the civil law system that operates in most of Europe relates to Ireland's common law tradition. If the Minister of State were to review the transcript of that engagement, she would see clearly that the current wording of the legislation failed to fully reassure members this was adequately addressed. The justice committee has the benefit of having members who are much more legally astute than I am. They are able to probe these questions in great detail.”
“That is why this is a very simple amendment, but it is crucial because these enterprises are Irish based in large part. They are not going to up and leave as a result of changes to tax policy or international regulatory frameworks. These are the people who could potentially become the next generation of IT powerhouses, and more important, they could be based in Ireland. We need to be supporting these companies to navigate their way to a point where perhaps some of them will be able to compete, I hope in a better-regulated world, with some of the other large multinational operations. I hope they will be based in Ireland and will be part of the Irish framework as opposed to the international framework, which can be a bit like the wild west. I ask the Minister of State to support this amendment.”
“Another question is "Will the proposed changes result in any of the following impacts for SMEs?" With respect to additional administrative costs, the answer was "Yes", as it was with respect to additional compliance costs. Across the board there is recognition. The Department's paper sets out a number of mitigation measures that will be put in place, including: - A ‘one-stop-shop’ for e-Evidence international cooperation - Development of a web portal ... [which I have asked for an update on] - Consideration of the impact of penalties based on size and financial situation - No requirement for service providers to collect, compile and report data to Member States or the Commission However, none of that is an assurance efforts will be made to ensure a minimal administrative burden is placed on small to medium-sized service providers.”
“This is going to impact large companies and medium companies but it is also going to impact micro companies, which have between one and nine employees. As I mentioned, some of these could be very small indeed. Again, the question the Department asked of itself was "Has an estimate been carried out of the numbers of micro, small and medium companies affected directly or indirectly by the measure?" The answer to that question was "No". I would have thought that if the Department had gone to the effort of carrying out an analysis of whether this would have a disproportionate impact on smaller enterprises and it came to the conclusion that it would, the next thing it would do is ask precisely how many companies it was going to have an impact on and ask what the Department and the Government could do, within legislation, to provide supports.”
“One of the questions is "Is the new policy, primary or secondary legislation, or regulatory compliance requirement relevant for SMEs?" The answer given was "Yes". The test then asks, "Are SME impacts likely to be more substantial than on other companies, for example, in terms of adverse effects?" The answer was unequivocally "Yes". There is a whole section about the consultations that took place and it says "Department officials engaged bilaterally with relevant industry stakeholders and with the SME representative bodies to incorporate their views where appropriate." That is important, but nothing in the legislation puts an onus on the director of the new body to take into consideration all of that.”
“It is clear that "While many large service provides will create their own infrastructure to connect with the decentralised IT system, a requirement for SMEs to do the same would have a disproportionate impact." Again, those are not my words but those from the Department’s report. That report says "consideration is being given to the development of a web-based interface which will allow service providers to communicate securely with authorities without having to establish their own infrastructure." I would welcome an update on whether that has happened. The really interesting thing about the SME test the Department conducted is that it asks very clear questions and gives yes-no answers, which is somewhat unique.”
“SMEs that do not designate an addressee, for example, or fail to comply with the e-Evidence Directive or Regulation will be exposed to administrative penalties. Nobody is suggesting that should be a byball and that SMEs should be therefore exempt from having to comply with the directive, but when we talk about SMEs some people have the idea that we mean Enterprise Ireland companies, whereas in some cases we could be talking about companies with two or three employees, even though they may be operating in this area. The e-evidence regulation requires the development of a centralised IT system. No one should know the potential costs of that better than this Government because every time it tries to do one, it has ended up spending clean fortunes.”
“It stated: For SMEs in particular, the requirement under the e-Evidence Package for authorities to nominate an addressee as a single point of contact for law enforcement authorities seeking to access electronic evidence will make it easier and more affordable for service providers to authenticate production orders. [However] ... the most significant burden on SMEs identified by the Commission’s assessment is the obligation to designate (and empower) a legal representative ... For SMEs [and again, this is all taken directly from the Department's regulatory analysis] not already engaged in voluntary direct cooperation activities, the e-Evidence Package presents a new regulatory burden that comes with potential legal, administrative and technical costs.”
“Because they operate on such a global scale, having a unified framework across the EU will be of benefit to them. There are the big five, and you could even say big ten to include the vast majority, but 600 service providers are likely to be impacted as addressees in Ireland. A significant proportion of those are going to be small, Irish-based SMEs. When we are talking about, as I mentioned earlier, 300,000 requests annually, even a small proportion coming to those SMEs could be an important point. The potential effect on SMEs has been identified by the Department in its analysis.”
“The amendment is aspirational in many respects but it also sets out a template. It is important to say the vast majority of requests that will come through due to this legislation will come to the largest companies in the world, in effect, which happen to be headquartered here. The SME test carried out by the Department is a very useful document. It estimated that the five largest service providers will receive about 95% of all current cross-border requests in Europe and that even if there are substantial changes, about 90% will go to those companies. I do not think anybody will feel much sympathy if those companies experience an additional administration or cost burden to fulfil their obligations. The irony is companies of that size are probably going to end up making savings as a result of the EU directive.”
“I move amendment No. 2: In page 15, between lines 14 and 15, to insert the following: “(g) ensure minimal administrative burden is placed on small to medium sized service providers.”. There is real concern about the administrative burden this legislation could place on small and medium enterprises, SMEs, particularly in the IT sector. The Government conducted an SME test and I will talk more about that later but it found that the legislative impact on the SME sector will be significantly greater than it will be on larger companies and that there will be administrative and compliance costs. This amendment is simple but it will be incredibly useful. It is to put in a provision on page 15 of the Bill after line 14 to "ensure minimal administrative burden is placed on small to medium sized service providers”.”
“In this regard, the type of power in question has been used to curtail people’s freedom, not only freedom of expression but also freedom of movement and other fundamental human rights. Again, I ask for support for the amendment. I am urging that we put in place a protection. This is what it is. Ultimately, we are talking about a protection that we hope and expect will never need to be used but without which I fear we will be adopting legislation that is going to be very good only in theory, as the officials themselves said to the committee, and that ultimately will not provide the confidence in our legislation that we should be demanding as that legislation would be underpinned by EU regulations we would have no power to amend in the future.”
“Considering the prevalence of the companies in respect of which orders and requests will be made in this State, we are going to play a disproportionate role in the decisions made. With 300,000 requests annually, I fear this will become routine for any member state seeking information. For most criminal investigations, we want a seamless process. We want Irish authorities to be able to contact other authorities to seek electronic data and to get the information very quickly. We have to be confident, however, that all such requests are made on the basis of a genuine need to address a criminal issue rather than for some of the more concerning reasons for which requests have been in other states around the world.”
“There would be very real concerns and very valid reasons a Cabinet would come to the point that it would invoke the measure, and it would only be on the basis that it was actually protecting the rule of law, the conditionality regulation, protecting our own Constitution and protecting the EU treaty frameworks in respect of democracy and the rule of law. I hope such a provision will never be needed, but I can tell the Minister of State that if the protection is needed and we do not have it in place, these Houses will be judged very harshly. My next point is critical because this is a debate that probably is not happening to the same extent in all EU member states.”
“What the Minister has outlined is a very convoluted process whereby each individual application that might come from a state would have to be dealt with through the process as outlined. I understand what the Minister is saying about potential Executive powers. Again, however, the motion as it is set out states it would involve the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration in consultation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. Essentially, that implies it will be a Government decision.”
“It does not because, with due respect, the Minister of State is missing the point. The amendment is in respect of specific states and the ability to suspend co-operation, in part or in full, based on the list of scenarios I have set out. Arguably and hopefully, the provision would never need to be utilised, but it would be negligent not to put a safeguard in place. People might ask when or how what I describe could happen. Consider where the Hungarian Government got very close to in terms of control of the courts and the breakdown of independence in the Judiciary and the police. It is not beyond our wildest imagination that we could end up in a similar situation.”
“Members will have an opportunity to put in place this protection, and I am encouraging and urging the Minister of State to adopt and accept this amendment, or at least give an indication that she will put forward a similar amendment that will, ultimately, do the same thing.”
“We discussed this at the justice committee, and we received nowhere near the required level of assurance that we would not end up in a situation where we were sharing very sensitive information with a police authority that might have some form of negative agenda. This has now been put clearly on the record of the House. I do not want to see a situation in ten years or any future point where we have Ministers shrugging their shoulders and saying they have no option but to facilitate such and such a government in what is clearly a nefarious request because we are bound to do so by a law we adopted in these Houses.”
“The difficulty here, and the reason I think this amendment is so important, is that this is potentially the last chance the Oireachtas will have to put some form of protection in place. To be very clear on what the protection is, it is not looking for anything other than for the Minister to have the authority, in conjunction with the Minister for foreign affairs, to realise that there is a particular area of concern and then direct that there be a suspension of co-operation to protect Ireland’s legal framework and position, thereby potentially protecting Irish citizens and other European Union citizens. The amendment further states that this would be important in the event that by co-operating and facilitating one member state in breach of Article 6 of the EU treaties, we would breach the treaties ourselves by facilitating it.”
“It is not tenable, and I do not think it should be accepted as just part of the process, that if another member state, for whatever reason, has a government that tries to abuse these regulations, we have no option but to deal with it. If we have a situation where the courts in another state have been manipulated or become less independent than we would accept as a given, and we do not have some form of control here, then we would just have to accede to every request that comes through. That is, ultimately, what is in place. These are not the politics of efficiency or harmonisation. These are actually the politics of potentially damaging our own justice system to facilitate the lowest common denominator across Europe.”
“We have seen how easy it is for democratic backsliding to happen. We saw this in Hungary in particular, but also in other states where rule-of-law issues have become a major concern. There is always a fear that if a government system does not have the judicial and policing independence we would take for granted here in Ireland, we could have a potential attempt to use this legislation to do all sorts of things. The difficulty is that once this legislation is adopted as part of an EU framework, then we are locked into it. That is the ratchet mechanism in how EU policy works. Once you are in, you cannot get out. We know the challenges that the EU-Israel Association Agreement has created. We signed up to it - and I think, very clearly, we should not have - and now we cannot get out of it, despite the fact that Israel is committing genocide.”
“It is also important to acknowledge, however, what these requests will be based on. When the justice committee received a briefing from the Department, a briefing that I think the committee unanimously agreed was unsatisfactory in respect of quite a number of questions going unanswered, the officials acknowledged that, “In theory, the regulation is based on the idea of full faith in credit in the member states' legal systems." This means that the entire premise of us adopting this legislation is accepting at face value that the legal system in every other EU state is and forever will be operating in accordance with the rule of law and the treaties of the European Union. As Deputy Mark Ward indicated during the Second Stage debate, however, “theory” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.”
“Of all other EU states, therefore, we are likely to request that about 2,000 production orders be fulfilled in any given year whereas 300,000 are expected to be requested from Ireland. They will come from all over. In practice, then, the expectation of how this will work in practice is that police services will request information from IT companies and it will be given over. Where it is not, though, the new body will be given the responsibility. In principle, all of that is very important and welcome. We absolutely accept the principle, when we consider that many criminal investigations - I think virtually all - have an electronic component and where either text messages, server data or emails are required. We want that to be a seamless process in 95% of cases.”