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utilised by An Garda Síochána. The Bill will build on that body of work by providing gardaí with the ability to utilise biometric analysis, a tool that will allow An Garda Síochána to further upgrade its investigative tools for the digital age. This is generally referred … facial recognition technology, FRT, but there is of course much more to biometric analysis than merely facial recognition. Biometric analysis covers an assessment of the physical, behavioural or physiological characteristics of an individual. In terms of the legislation that I am seeking to introduce for the benefit

important one. There have been a number of contributions from Deputies in respect of the reliability of what is referred to as biometric analysis. We need to be clear there is no investigative tool used by the Garda or any of us in life that is infallible … available to try to analyse biometrically a lot of data to subsequently identify individuals. Deputy Carthy asked the reason for using the term "biometric analysis" and not "biometric categorisation". In fairness, biometric categorisation is a subgroup of biometric analysis. Biometric analysis covers elements of a number

Dáil before the end of the year. Already, questions have been raised. One of those is why the Bill refers to "biometric analysis" when what is referred to is essentially what is termed "biometric categorisation" in the AI Act. The lack of any reference … will put a number of questions to him. What is the reason for referring to this process as “biometric analysis” instead of what is called “biometric categorisation” in the AI Act? Why is there no reference to the AI Act? What are the specific circumstances when this categorisation

should be clear about what this Bill does and does not do. It would allow An Garda Síochána to carry out biometric analysis, subject to a code of practice to be drawn up by the Garda Commissioner and laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. This would involve … intention of An Garda Síochána to run images against a database. The Bill now before us is clearer in making a distinction between biometric analysis, allowed under the Bill, and biometric identification based on databases, which is not allowed. That is welcome. However, he EU’s Prüm

what TDs were asked at that point to grapple with. It did not examine, because they had not been included, the new biometric analysis powers that are contained in this Bill. Those new elements are not minor, technical changes. They are a very significant expansion of State surveillance … That has been well interrogated by previous speakers. However, this Bill avoids the language of biometric categorisation altogether. It introduces the concept of biometric analysis without clearly defining its scope and fails to set out how these powers will be aligned with the EU AI Act's protections

have done a lot of work on. Something which concerns me in the context of this legislation is that facial recognition and biometric analysis technology is a high-risk use of AI under the EU AI Act and this Act has not yet been fully implemented. Indeed

dealing with mental health issues, but their abilities were certainly not brought into play that day. We are talking now about giving gardaí biometric analysis tools, body cameras, tasers and more rights to use pepper spray, which is in related legislation that will accompany this Bill. What about

create incorrect results does not mean that cannot be mitigated and we cannot have a situation where a human being is making that analysis for himself or herself, and that is really important. In the debate on the original legislation I likened it to opening a PDF with … hours of CCTV can go through and search for the facial characteristics of a person who is being sought, or the other biometric factors that can be programmed into the software. It may well turn up results that garda knows are not correct or, more importantly, that