Gardaí hope to bring forward legislation for facial recognition technology for the most "serious of cases."

Yesterday, the Cabinet approved the next steps for a bill from Justice Minister Helen McEntee, which would allow Gardaí to wear a body camera or bodycam – a wearable audio, video, or photographic recording system.

On Newstalk Breakfast, Minister McEntee said the overall objective of the bill was to make sure that Gardaí have "the tools and the technology that they need, not just to keep themselves safe, but to keep everybody else safe and also to help them when they're going through criminal investigations."

"For particular types of crimes, for the first on the scene, that initial bit of evidence is really important," she said.

"What we will do separately then is bring forward heads of the bill for facial recognition technology."

The technology

Minister McEntee said it is "absolutely sensible" that when Gardaí are procuring the body-worn cameras, they would be procuring those that can operate facial recognition software.

"What we're saying very clearly is this can't be used, we have to bring through legislation before that can happen," she said.

"There will be facial recognition. There will be body-worn cameras."

The facial recognition software technology could potentially be used in cases where Gardaí have to sift through a lot of evidence, in order to determine which is the most recent – such as in child sexual abuse imagery cases.

"You have to be able to very quickly identify which of those images are potentially years old," she said.

"By comparing them with other data, by using facial recognition – there may be images that are only hours or days old – to be able to identify those quickly where a child might still be at risk."

'Serious offences'

Minister McEntee said facial recognition software will be limited to use in cases that would potentially carry a life sentence.

"So, that's murder, it's serious sexual assault, it's serious security issues, and there is a wide range of offences where you have aggravated assault," she said.

"The most important thing now is that we actually get about introducing this legislation that the body cams can be procured and that we start using this technology.

"We are an outlier in this. We are one of the few countries across Europe that do not have this, so to be able to use it at home, but also to be able to engage with Europol and Interpol and other guardian and police forces will be really, really helpful."

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