Justice Minister Helen McEntee has confirmed plans to broaden the deployment of facial recognition technology (FRT) in criminal investigations to include assaults against Garda officers. This expansion of FRT utilisation, even before it has been formally implemented in the Republic, is expected to attract criticism.
According to Minister McEntee, the rise in attacks and intimidation experienced by Garda members while on active duty has reached such grave levels that she’s decided to include these offenses in the list of crimes that can be probed using FRT.
Subsequently, assaulting a Garda or Defence Forces member will be incorporated into the Facial Recognition Technology Bill. Therefore, FRT can be employed in inquiries into these offenses as well as child sexual abuse, child kidnapping or abduction, drug-related crimes, and human trafficking.
Minister McEntee, speaking at the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors annual conference in Co Mayo’s Westport, asserted, “The time for facial recognition technology has come”. She emphasised the need to move past the days of Gardaí having to comb through numerous hours of footage, which consumes time, resources, and postpones arrests and prosecutions.
Although FRT, introduced by McEntee, has sparked continuous discussion in Ireland, mostly over human rights issues, it can scan through thousands of hours of footage much faster than humans can. Nonetheless, activists and scholars have raised concerns that the bill may push society into increased surveillance, as the technology has been found to be susceptible to errors.
Despite AGSI’s call for mandatory sentences for attacks on emergency personnel including gardaí, McEntee, who hopes to retain her Justice portfolio under incoming Fine Gael leader Simon Harris as Taoiseach, has dismissed such a move. While the maximum penalty for assaulting a Garda has been raised from seven to 12 years, the minister said she does not foresee dictating mandatory sentences, thereby limiting judicial discretion.
“It’s crucial that I do not, in my ministerial capacity, instruct any judges on sentences to apply,” was her comment, emphasising on the import of the division of authority. She had recently revisited this subject, and the feedback she received was that it would be crossing a line in her ministerial duties.
AGSI Deputy General Secretary Ronan Clogher’s proposal for bolstering the power of the Garda from its current strength of 14,000 to 18,000 in the future was echoed by Ms. McEntee. He believed that the government’s goal to enhance the force to 15,000 is inadequate in light of the growing populace and resulting policing requirements.
Ms McEntee stated that Garda recruitment is gaining traction again and as soon as the goal of reaching 15,000 members is attained, the size of the force will continue to grow. Nonetheless, she refuted AGSI president Paul Curran’s claim that the government effectively distorted the Garda count last year.
He claimed during his speech to the attendees that 109 new recruits were briefly enrolled at the Garda College, Templemore in County Tipperary, on December 28th last year and were then immediately sent home, solely to inflate the recorded figures of new recruits at the end of the year.
In Paul’s words, such manipulation doesn’t address the actual issue, and he notes the recruitment rates have been disappointingly low during the three national campaigns. Ms McEntee, however, challenged the notion that the group of 109 recruits was hastily incorporated into Garda at the year’s end purely to embellish the 2023 figures. According to her, it was planned in the previous year that five groups would enter the college, and this strategy remained unchanged towards the end of the year.