Plans to use video surveillance in court

JUSTICE Minister Brian Lenihan is planning to introduce legislation which will allow video surveillance of criminals to be used as evidence in court, bringing the battle against crime barons into the 21st century.

The minister, who made the announcement last night at the annual Garda Representative Association (GRA) conference in Co Carlow, said he is also preparing to roll out a multi-million euro encrypted radio system for gardaí, which would prevent gangland bosses from eavesdropping on the force’s current archaic analogue communications systems.

He said his officials in the Department of Justice were working on drafting the surveillance tape legislation and hoped to have it ready to go before the Dáil before the end of the year.

However, Mr Lenihan said that audio evidence gained from phone tapping was unlikely to be used in court as it could present pitfalls, such as proving beyond doubt the identity of the person who had been recorded.

He said that while gardaí were always using surveillance to monitor significant criminals, they would not necessarily use all video evidence gathered, in case it may compromise their covert operations.

“On the one hand, while the use of such evidence may in some cases help to secure convictions, on the other hand we have to avoid as much as possible Garda techniques for intelligence gathering being compromised,” Mr Lenihan said.

But he said he viewed visual surveillance evidence as being “of considerable value” in the fight against crime bosses.

The minister said he had been consulting with Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy on the issue and was hopeful that the legislation would be introduced when “complex legal issues” had been satisfactorily resolved.

“It is very important that we get the drafting of any proposals right,” he said.

The minister also confirmed that the Government had yesterday approved proposals for the new digitised Garda radio system, Tetra.

It is expected that the contract with joint operators — Motorola, Eircom and Sigma — would be signed tomorrow. Garda sources indicated last night that the Tetra system will have 95% land coverage on handheld units, and up to 97% coverage from patrol car communication systems.

Gardaí have been plagued by criminals using scanners to listen into their outdated analogue radio systems.

The situation became so critical that many detectives have resorted to using mobile phones to communicate serious incidents with each other.

The minister said the new Tetra systems would be installed in Garda stations in the Greater Dublin area later this year, and rolled out to the rest of the country over the following two years.