Michael McDowell
National University of Ireland · Independent · Ireland
“Then I think of this particular Chamber where people are polite and kind to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There is no baying or shouting down or whatever. It is a great tribute to the Seanad staff that that spirit continues to exist in this House.”
“I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee.”
“I am one of the people who disagrees with the substance of that report. We have to have a real solid debate on it here in this House, not merely a cursory one. It is an issue of fundamental importance. It cannot be avoided, one way or the other. Whatever your views are on it, it needs to be thrashed out.”
“Although coming up to the end of this term we are rushing things through, and the guillotine is well-oiled and slicing this way and that, we have a lot of work to do in the autumn.”
“The people who did that were brought before the International Court of Justice and condemned and imprisoned. If Ireland does not clearly state that there are to be consequences for people who do things like what Mladić, Milošević and Karadžić were brought to account for, if we are incapable as a State of publicly saying that what Secretar…”
“If we cannot, as a State, say publicly to Rubio, "Hands off the International Criminal Court", when they were quite happy when the people who did the 7,000 murders in Srebrenica got their just desserts, but when there is any suggestion that what has happened in Gaza, with 70,000 innocent people killed by aerial bombardment and land bombar…”
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“I am not opposing the Minister's motion but I am protesting that this is a substantial piece of work. To tell us, with a couple of days to go to either opt in or opt out without actually showing every Member what is involved and without going to the justice committee of the Houses and saying this is what is in issue and giving the Members of these Houses who sit on committees the opportunity to consider what is happening on a European level, is indicative of a very lax approach to the interaction of national parliaments of EU member states and the legislative process of the European Union itself.”
“The Minister has very limited time to describe what is involved but he has done so in fairly brief and concise form. When we look at the document, which I have in my hand now, it is very substantial. We have to reform our processes in these Houses. If this is what we are opting in to, it should be known to every Member of both Houses. They should have an opportunity to study it before being asked to simply rubber-stamp an opt-in or opt-out decision. They should be in a position to express views about the desirability of not merely the outline principle of the directive but every single aspect of the proposed directive, so that the wishes of the elected representatives of the Irish people can be fed into the process as to whether Ireland does or does not opt in to these types of measures on an informed, intelligent basis.”
“Then, it states "that Member States establish jurisdiction for offences covered by the proposal and that they inform the Commission if they ... [wish] to extend this jurisdiction in specific cases where the offence is committed outside their territory." All of those issues are significant and they should be examined carefully by this House when we make a decision to opt in or not to opt in, whether it is on a preliminary basis to enable us to participate in negotiation or it is to opt in after the adoption of the measure. I want to indicate my feeling that we are being presented with this motion days before the limit for opting in to the negotiation process is concerned and Members of this House have not been circulated with the text of the directive.”
“Directives should be circulated to all Members of the House in advance of motions of this kind. Apart from criminalising certain activities, it is proposed to create liabilities and penalties for legal persons, that is, companies. The proposed directive sets out aggravating circumstances, in respect of which penalties are to be agreed. There is a definition of what amounts to mitigating circumstances. There are provisions in relation to special investigative tools. I would like to know what that actually means. There is provision for limitation periods for the prosecution of offences. These are things that do not really apply in Ireland and yet, for some reason, it is thought that these have to be standardised across the European Union.”
“I welcome the Minister. In principle, I have no problem with the directive proposed in the European Parliament. We should do everything necessary to avoid trafficking in firearms, including trafficking in 3D-printed firearms. However, I have one question, which I hope the Minister will be able to answer. By opting in to the negotiation process, do we bind ourselves to opt in to the outcome, no matter what it is? That is an issue about which the House should be informed. Are we effectively opting in to something whose exact nature is not known? Can we legally opt out if we do not like the measures proposed? I fully accept that, in this case, that is an unlikely scenario but it could be the case nonetheless. It should be put on the record that the directive is a very lengthy document.”
“I move amendment No. 26 a : In page 12, between lines 3 and 4, to insert the following: “(3) The Minister may by regulation provide for any record required by subsection (1) to include such particulars as may be prescribed by such regulation of the race, ethnicity, nationality, or other social characteristic of the person searched or of the driver of the vehicle searched.”.”
“Instead, the suggestion has been made that somehow the CSO would be given access to PULSE records of every individual in the country who was stopped, searched and found to be clean and totally innocent, and from that some CSO report would come.”
“The Minister of State had suggested that the PPS identifiers could be of relevance in that the CSO would have access to PULSE data, try to match that to name, address and date of birth, and then produce some survey. I do not believe the CSO has the right to do that. I very much doubt that it would go through all of PULSE working out which people had been stopped and searched and then try to draw this data itself. The more obvious thing to do is for the Minister to say to the Garda that it would keep this data. The Garda has a computer and a system with a drop-down box, so it should do it and then we would find out the result.”
“I think there is a lot of explanation due about why it is right for police forces in England and Wales to be subject to this regime, why it is right that the PSNI or the Scottish police should be subject to this, but in the good old Republic of Ireland, where we have a written Constitution that says that everyone is equal before the law, we do not want to know if the law is being applied unequally to individuals. I think that is shameful.”
“Unless it is subject to the 100-year rule, which is very helpful for accountability, and is a CSO survey of a non-census kind, such as criminal victimisation studies, there will be no trace whatsoever of which communities and subsections of the community bear the brunt of policing. That seems to be the deliberate policy of the Government. It does not want to know. It will not even accept an amendment allowing a Minister of the day to say they would like to know this. Senator Ruane's amendment is more prescriptive and mandatory. For the very purpose of getting this amendment accepted, it was made extremely non-mandatory and discretionary. We now hear that the Garda does not want the discretion to enable itself to know these things.”
“It is because the Garda does not want to be accountable by reference to that information. That is the worry here. I go back to the point of how a person's PPS number could possibly assist. What kid going down Camden Street at 10 o'clock tonight, tomorrow night or the night after that will be in a position to hand over a PPS number? That will not happen. Unless we introduce mandatory ID cards - we have been promised that will never happen and that PPS numbers will never be used for this all over big brother approach - then PPS numbers are utterly irrelevant to all of this. Unless the Government is secretly cooking up the notion that it will put PPS numbers onto PULSE, too, and make them a requirement in future legislation, I do not see that happening. Likewise, census data is of no use. The Central Statistics Office collects that data.”
“There will be a permanent record. The fact that anybody was stopped will be there and there is no escaping it. It will be known for all time that Michael McDowell was stopped. He is on PULSE, he was stopped and searched, and nothing was found. That is fine. He was suspected of something but it turned out there was no evidence. That is on the Garda record, but my ethnicity is a secret. The gardaí are blind and do not want to know that. That is the one thing they do not want to know. I would have hoped that the Department would say that if the Minister could bring in regulations to collect ethnic minority information or whatever, he would do it in a sensible way that the Garda could manage and there would be no major problem, but I am now hearing that the Garda does not want that information. Why does it not want that information?”
“(2) A record made under subsection (1) shall contain the following information: (a) where known, the name, address and date of birth of the person or, as the case may be, the driver of the vehicle concerned; (b) the time and date of the search; (c) the reason or reasons for the search; (d) the provision of this Part under which the search was conducted; (e) the outcome of the search including, where a search results in the seizure of a relevant article or evidence relating to the commission of an offence, the article or evidence concerned. (3) The person or driver who is the subject of a search referred to in subsection (1) may, at any time, make a request in writing to a superintendent of An Garda Síochána in the Garda Síochána district in which the search was carried out for a copy of the record. This is mandatory.”
“I agree completely with Senator Ruane. Senator Byrne's point would be marvellous if somebody was stopped and searched, found to be clean and walked away. Would it not be great if the whole thing was forgotten in some way and there was no record of that person being stopped and searched? It would be nowhere. It would not exist. Section 13 of what the Government is proposing states: (1) A member who carries out a search under section 9 or 10 of a person or a vehicle shall, in accordance with this section, make a record of the search.”
“We are being asked to take it on trust that gardaí are immune from the unconscious prejudices which have shown up in the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. I do not accept that we should accept that.”
“Perhaps the Central Statistics Office could ask people every year whether they had been stopped. Maybe we could get some of this information that way because it does have an ongoing collection of census data dealing with issues such as how many people in the community have been criminally victimised. As far as I know, the CSO has never collected information on whether people have been stopped and searched by the gardaí in the past year. I do not believe it will ever happen. If it is not going to come from the CSO by means of some kind of survey of that kind - no matter how clever the CSO is in devising surveys and no matter how reliable its figures might be if it did conduct such a survey - we are going to be in the position of being in a submarine without a periscope. We will just not know. We do not know what is happening.”
“By the way, when I mentioned Oxford Street, perhaps I should not have done so. In reference to Senator Kelleher's point, it may well be that apparently statistically discriminatory figures would arise from the policing of the Notting Hill Carnival. If you want to find some explanations for anomalies, you will find them. What we are facing here is the Department, in the interests of An Garda Síochána, saying that it does not want this degree of transparency, and that it does not want it to be known that people who have never been in court were stopped more often than was statistically likely because of their membership of an ethnic group or whatever. There was waffle from the Department about the census. How could the census possibly help? We have just had 100 years of census material. How could it possibly help?”
“I am going to come back to the Minister of State on another issue. Why does the Department not want to know the information that the British and the Northern Irish collect with a view to working out if the powers given to police in the United Kingdom are being fairly used with regard to minorities? Why would a Department not want to know that? This is wilful ignorance. Nobody wants to know this information because it makes policing more accountable and it ensures that if, in fact, stop and search is being unfairly operated in respect of certain social groups and minorities, nobody can prove it. Nobody in this House can prove it now. Nobody here can say for a fact whether black kids are stopped more often than white kids - nobody can do it - but if you are a black kid in London, you can actually prove it.”
“I am making a different point, which is that if you give search powers to members of An Garda Síochána and these powers are deployed in a manner that discriminates against minorities, they know it. They know it because their son is stopped and searched more often because he is a black kid than the neighbour who lives next door whose kids are not stopped and searched that often. That is what we are talking about. We do not have to go further than looking at those burned-out houses in Belfast last night, which had nothing to do with anything, to realise how deep the sense of fear and oppression of racial minorities actually is. If you are in a minority and the system seems to stop you more often on the street than anybody else, you have to ask why this is being done if it is not the colour of your skin. Why is it being done?”
“If people are stopped and searched and found to be in possession of stolen property or whatever, they are arrested and summonsed or whatever. Something happens to them. They are brought to a Garda station and something happens. That is one thing. What is much less known with regard to stop-and-search powers relates to people who are entirely innocent. A group of four may be told to wait and that they will be searched. None of them have a knife or anything else on them. They are just left to stand there when members of Garda Síochána have told them they are to wait because they are going to search them. It is the innocent people who feel the brunt of unfair policing. I am not arguing for the naive view that everybody is entitled to an equal chance not to be detected committing a crime. I am not making that point.”
“I take that last point, which was that the media can make what they want of information. People like Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk will put two and two together and get 22 if they want. I appreciate that. However, what I am saying is that in light of the ruling from the Chair on the last occasion, the amendment I have tabled has been specifically altered to make it entirely voluntary and discretionary. There is no compulsion on a Minister to do anything with it. If he does not make any regulations, that is the end of the matter. The annual report does not have to mention anything because there is nothing there to be reported on. There is something here that really does get to me. A decision has been made that we do not want to know. Senator Ruane made a very good point.”
“The references to the Attorney General studying PPSNs and census data and the like are a smokescreen of the most obvious kind for saying, "We will not even allow the Minister, under this statute, to collect this data because we do not want the Minister to be in a position to collect this data." If the amendment I have put down were to say, "You must collect A, B, C, D and E forms of data and it is mandatory to do so", that would be one thing, but if you say to the Minister for justice, "You may, at your discretion, collect this kind of data", and the answer is, "No, we do not want to do that", I see a very different agenda at play, I am sorry to say.”
“I am not shocked that the fundamental, underlying explanation given by the Minister of State is that this is all about assisting gardaí to police rather than us keeping an eye on whether these new powers are in fact going to be the subject of any accountability in terms of how they are used from day to day on the ground.”
“Young black men know that. That is the reality of their existence, and if nobody is going to protect them from that kind of unequal deployment of police powers, it is a sad thing. Are England - and this is the question - or Northern Ireland or Scotland promoting racism by collecting this data, or are they saying to everybody in society, "We are keeping an effective eye on how the powers that we in Parliament, in Westminster and the Assembly in Northern Ireland and the Scottish Parliament, gave to our police forces and which actually affect real people with real characteristics unequally in our society"? When I said I was shocked at the beginning, I am shocked that that is the attitude.”
“Does my PPS number say that about me? I do not think it does. It says nothing about the colour of my skin, I assume, except I am getting red now thinking about this. When I say I am shocked, I am shocked that that is the attitude of official Ireland: "We do not want to know this data and we do not want to be informed of it and we want to give more powers to the Garda, but we do not want to accumulate any data which would inform us as to whether these new powers are being fairly applied across the board." I started by saying I was not on some moral high horse, and I am not. I believe that powers will be applied unequally in the nature of things. I also believe that a young black man in London going down Oxford Street is eight times more likely, or whatever it is, to be stopped and searched by a policeman than a white kid is.”
“The idea that if we were to prove, for instance, that, as in England, people with dark skin were stopped five times more than people with white skin, that would somehow reflect badly on social attitudes on black people, or that it might play into the hands of racists that the gardaí are stopping people with dark skin more often than those with fair skin, I just cannot accept at all. That is inverse logic. As for the census data, flying that kite is ridiculous. Census data will not help us in working out next year whether these powers are being deployed fairly. That will not work. I cannot imagine how PPS numbers could be integrated into collecting data of this kind. Does my PPS number say that I am a middle-class man from Ranelagh or that I do not live on a halting site or that my parents are not Nigerian?”
“All of the information that is being selected here for recording is comfortable for An Garda Síochána because it protects the force from any accusation of unconscious bias or overt prejudice in some areas where policing powers are deployed unfairly against different categories of the community. Having said that, I am not surprised. I suspected this three weeks ago and now I am satisfied that what is really happening here is a desire. The amendment I put down after the episode here a couple of weeks ago was designed to just make it possible for the Minister to assemble this information - not to say to him or the Garda that it must be done, but that gardaí may be required to collect this information. There is no desire even to empower the Minister to set out in a regulation any social data of this kind or ethnic data or minority data.”
“I suspected that the first day we discussed this here and I see it now laid bare. There is no desire whatsoever to put in place the kind of measures that exist in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There is an antipathy towards collecting that kind of information because nobody wants to know the outcome. Nobody wants to be able to say that black people are stopped more often. Nobody wants to know. I made the point that there was not even a reference to the place where a search took place. If Tallaght is getting it rather than Rathgar, this data, when the button is pressed, will not tell us that. I thought it was just a minor oversight but it is not.”
“Even if the PPS number of everybody was put on PULSE and, God almighty, the poor fellow on Camden Street was required to come up with his PPS number, in addition to his name, address and everything else, while he is being searched, how ridiculous a proposition is that? It is suggesting that the records made of the names, addresses and dates of birth of people who are stopped and searched will be cross-referenced with PPS numbers, which will somehow yield up to somebody who has incredible powers under the general data protection regulation, GDPR, to go and find out how many of those people ended up being identified as members of the Traveller community, immigrants or as being of a particular religion. I say to the Minister of State that I suspected that this would be the reaction of the Department.”
“As to the statement that personal public service, PPS, numbers are going to be used and that somehow if that is done, we will be able to know all the things that this data might reveal to us, let us take a look at that. Supposing a PPS number does in fact work out whether somebody is or is not a member of the Traveller community. I do not know whether it does but I doubt it very much. I do not know if the McDonaghs and the McDowells get different numbers so that somebody can work out whether it is a McDonagh or a McDowell who is getting stopped and searched. I do not understand that.”
“I think it is a complete smokescreen. What could the census tell us about who is or is not stopped to be frisked on Camden Street on a Friday evening? How could that data help us in the slightest? That is baloney. It is clever baloney to suggest that the Attorney General is studying this issue and looking at the possible use of census data to assist us in working out whether stop and search is or is not being fairly implemented. With respect, that is rubbish. The Attorney General is a very wise and clever man. I have the greatest admiration for him but God bless him, he is not going to be able to do anything with census data to assist us on that.”
“He would say that he does not spend all day every day running through the names and addresses or the skin colour of people. He would say that it is not in PULSE and that he does not have the time or the inclination to waste time on doing research of this kind. That is why in Britain the policing and criminal evidence legislation and the equality legislation were specifically circumscribed by an obligation to accumulate this data so as to act as a check against either unconscious or institutional prejudice in the manner in which policing powers are exercised, as opposed to the entirely neutral manner in which they will appear on the Statute Book of this country. I do not understand for one minute the Minister of State's reference to the census. Senator Ruane says she is confused by it. I am not confused by it.”
“It is precisely because there is no intention whatsoever to balance the increased policing powers being conferred on gardaí with some kind of editorial control at some point of which portions of the community are on the receiving end where these powers are deployed. That is what this amendment and, I presume, Senator Ruane's are all about. It is to make it possible for us to know that if we give additional powers to An Garda Síochána, what the social effect is, who is likely to be stopped, who is likely not to be stopped, how these powers are working out and whether in those circumstances something should be done about the manner in which they are being deployed. How will anybody know that black people are more likely to be stopped and searched if this information is not collected? Are we to rely on the Garda Commissioner?”
“I get that and that is the whole reason the amendments are being proposed. I know that the Garda does not want to collect this information. I know it wants to be left alone. I know it does not want anybody to say that black people are being stopped four times more often than white people. It is inconvenient information. It disappoints me that the Department of justice is proposing this Garda powers Bill on the one hand and, at the same time, not balancing it with mechanisms to ensure that it would be socially just in the way it was implemented. That is my point. I know full well that this particular measure is intended solely to make the PULSE system as comprehensive as possible for Garda purposes. It was precisely for that reason that this amendment was tendered.”
“I know the Minister of State has been recently appointed and that this attitude of the Department probably predates her appointment. Nothing I am going to say now is intended personally but I am shocked by the attitude the Department exhibits in its briefing of the Minister of State, as represented in her contribution. In Britain, it is considered important that racial minorities be protected by the provision of statistics that draw to the attention of the British Parliament, the police force and the public who is at the receiving end of the deployment of policing powers. The Minister of State has just said that the purpose of the information and data collected under section 13 is not for the purpose that the amendments in my and Senator Ruane's names are being sought.”
“The UK authorities can do this and in Northern Ireland, religion comes into it as well. I do not think religion is all that important here. I cannot imagine Protestants being picked on more than Catholics or vice versa . If that was the case, maybe Muslim minorities might consider that they were being unfairly picked on. In Northern Ireland and Great Britain, these figures are collected and are available. It acts as a regime which runs counter to unconscious or conscious prejudice as to how police powers are deployed in respect of people from different backgrounds and people who belong to social minorities. It is in that spirit that I intend to move amendment No. 26 a .”
“Senator Ruane talked about her experience in Tallaght. If stop and search is far more frequent in Tallaght than it is in Rathgar, we should know that. That is why the term "place" is important to stick in as one of the matters to be recorded. It also covers the question of search in a custody suite as opposed to search in public, so we know how many people were brought to custody suites to be searched rather than simply searched in public. It is in that spirit that this amendment is proposed. I am not trying to make the work of gardaí more difficult. Under this amendment, the Minister is giving a wide latitude as to how, if it at all, the Minister prescribes recording of these particulars. It may be, for instance, that it is impractical to work out whether Italians or French people are or are not to be noted down separately.”
“At least those figures and statistics would be known so that corrective policing policy can be deployed to make it clear to members of the categories of citizen that is referred to here, and even non-citizen, that policing is not just directed at them, if there is any sense that if they look sideways at a garda they will be searched while white people seem to walk past without ever being bothered at all, or that if a group of young people are stopped the black kid gets searched and the white kids do not. People must have some degree of confidence that the figures are there to show society at large, the Minister in particular, Members of this Parliament, and the public generally, how these powers are actually being deployed in practical circumstances on a day-to-day basis. That is why I mentioned "the place".”
“I am making that concession at the beginning to underline my conviction that there is a very serious danger that racial minorities will be subject to inordinate and unjustified deployment of police powers. There is a danger that will happen. They always say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best way for us to counter prejudice and unconscious prejudice in the deployment of police powers is, in my view, to collect figures and statistics about it so that the Garda Commissioner can press a button, if this is all done on PULSE, and see that non-nationals are 12 times more likely to be searched than Irish nationals or that members of the Travelling community are eight times more likely to be searched.”
“They are carrying knives or fighting in the streets or something like that. Alternatively, some social groups may be more likely to engage in certain forms of activity than others. That may be the case. Not much is proved by saying the number of stop and searches in Temple Bar is radically different from that on the main street in Rathgar. It does not prove that policing is necessarily irrational, prejudiced or whatever. It may be explained by other circumstances. I am saying that because I do not want to sound like I am on a moral high horse and say that all policing is inevitably going to have the same consequences for every group in society no matter how it is deployed.”
“My research led me to believe that a person in the United Kingdom was eight times more likely to be stopped and searched under the UK's police and criminal evidence and stop and search procedures if the person's skin was darker than olive or if they were black. They were eight times more likely to be searched. There may be some good reasons sometimes for racial profiling. There may be some good reasons in certain circumstances where particular issues are arising of a policing kind. It may be that those kind of figures are not just the fruit of prejudice. I accept that. I am not going to say that statistics of that kind are conclusive that there is institutional racism or prejudice in the policing process. Sometimes it may be that some racial minorities are engaging socially in activities which are a cause of worry.”
“26 a , which is a substitute additional amendment in my name, I do not know how practical this will be in every particular circumstance. However, it provides that: The Minister may [require] by regulation ... [that the records] required by subsection (1) ... [would] include such particulars as ... [the Minister might choose to prescribe] by such regulation ... [relating to] race, ethnicity, nationality, or other social characteristic of the person searched or of the driver of the vehicle searched. The reason for this is that it is known that racial profiling does take place by members of police forces right across Europe.”
“It occurred to me when listening to Senator Ruane's argument about people being brought to custody suites for the purpose of searches, that if the time, place and date of searches were required to be recorded, that would meet that point. Recording whether it was a street search or a Garda station search would meet that point. Although I have not put down an amendment to section 13(2)(b), it occurs to me that Senator Ruane's worry about people being the subject of intimate searches and the places where searches take place would be covered if the record that is made includes not merely the time and date of the search but where the search actually took place. I ask the Minister to look at that point because it seems to me that it would be a simple point to deal with between now and Report Stage. Moving on to amendment No.”
“I wish to speak to my amendment No. 26 a on the first additional list of amendments, which has been circulated. The purpose of this provision is to insert a new subsection (3) into section 13 to enable the Minister by regulations to provide for any record, which is required by section 13(1), to include such particulars as the Minister may prescribe in such regulation of the race, ethnicity, nationality or other social characteristic of the person searched or of the driver of the vehicle searched. This proposal is simply to enable the Minister to add to the requirements under section 13(1), which are mandatory recordable matters, a variety of other particulars that I believe are necessary. To answer the point raised by Senator Ruane, section 13(2)(b) requires the time and date of the search to be recorded.”
“Gardaí cannot go up or down Camden Street equipped with interpreters to deal with everybody they might meet and want to search. I would ask the Minister of State to consider between now and Report Stage accepting an amendment along the lines of an explanation of the consequences of failing to comply.”
“I sympathise with the first paragraph concerning the consequences of failing to comply with a search because when one looks at section 15, if somebody obstructs a search, it is important that he or she should know that under section 15, he or she is liable on conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €30,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years year or both. These are serious consequences for acting the maggot on a street and resisting a search under whatever misapprehension be it assisted by alcohol or whatever else. What Senator Ruane is suggesting is that the consequences of not complying should be explained to people as they are in many other circumstances, for instance, for drunk driving. I do not agree with her amendment with regard to the right to an interpreter.”
“What I would say is that if there is nobody in charge of it, it is not in motion and it is just standing on a street, why not give the Garda the right to look in that vehicle rather than in the restricted circumstances described in section 10? I ask the Department to take a look at it and ask if this is an unintended loophole in the law. Is it reasonable to say that, as long it is being driven and stopped, it can be searched, but if it is just stationary and there is no person apparently in charge of the car, it cannot be searched under this provision? Is that a sensible loophole to leave in the law?”
“Can I put it this way? I will withdraw the amendment if the Department at least opens its mind to the possibility that it is a good idea to extend the powers of search to vehicles that are under the control of somebody. Under this provision, you can search. This is not a sort of specious thing. Section 10 reads: 10. (1) This section applies where a member who is in— (a) a public place, or (b) any other place under a power of entry authorised by law [...] has reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence specified in Schedule 1 has been, is being or is about to be committed. In those circumstances, the member can instruct the person who is driving the car to stop it and they can then search it.”
“This is not purely personal; it is giving the gardaí reasonable powers to search not only abandoned vehicles but also stationary vehicles for which there is no explanation for their presence in a place. Is it open to a garda to force his or her way into a car on the grounds that he or she suspects that it may contain cannabis, for example? I wonder.”
“Again, this is an example of the Department officials taking a very absolute position. God bless them if they are right but if they are wrong that is a different matter. If a vehicle is stationary in a public place and locked and a garda suspects there could be, say, stolen property or controlled drugs inside it, has a garda the right to take out a jemmy and open the boot or to break the windows to get in? The Minister of State is saying this is covered by other legislation but I wonder if she is right about that. There is a tendency sometimes to be protective of the drafting that is done by the draftsman but I would ask has a garda the right to break the fly window of a car to take a look inside? Has he or she the right to jemmy open the boot? I do not know; I do not think they do.”