If you don’t ‘look Irish’, beware of biometric ID card

I SEEM to recall that during the last debate on ID cards, it was pointed out that they don’t stop those who wish to ignore the law and are also expensive to administer.

Asylum seekers, workers on visas and foreign students already must have a photo ID card issued by the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB).

So what difference will having biometric data on it make?

In Britain only those convicted of a crime can have their fingerprints and DNA records kept. I assume the same safeguards are in place here.

If so, why are law-abiding people who are legally resident here being treated as criminals?

Mind you, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform does have a paranoid mindset when it comes to those from outside the State (ie, all foreigners are dangerous, probably criminal, if given the chance, so we need to control and separate them from the local population to safeguard our Irish way of life.

Anyway, I really can’t see this scheme succeeding.

To illustrate this, take two scenarios:

1. A young woman who, though she has lived all her life in South America, is an Irish citizen. She does not look like the typical Irishwoman in her late 20s and her English is heavily accented — she sounds ‘Latino’.

So, if she is stopped by the gardaí as a possible illegal immigrant and asked for her biometric ID card, she will say, quite rightly: “I’m an Irish citizen. I don’t need one”.

What will the garda’s response be? Accept her at her word (and risk letting someone who is undocumented escape) or assume she is an ‘illegal’ and pursue the matter, perhaps even arresting her? If she is held, then presumably she has a case for wrongful arrest and compensation.

2. Take the case of a refugee, a person on a work permit/visa or leave to remain who will have to carry a biometric card.

In order to integrate fully this person decides after five years to ‘naturalise’ and become an Irish citizen.

So, on the day citizenship is acquired, he or she no longer needs the card. If this new citizen is then stopped by the gardaí, say at a random breath and road tax checkpoint, how is he or she going to be treated?

Of course, if the new citizen ‘looks’ Irish, then he or she will probably be believed, or at least given the benefit of the doubt.

This, in practice, will be open to abuse with the harassment of perfectly respectable people.

For example, what criteria will the gardaí use when deciding whether to ask someone for an ID card? Presumably whether they ‘look Irish’. In other words, the judgment will be on perceived racial characteristics.

Like the stop-and-search laws in Britain, it will only serve to create resentment and alienate certain sectors of society.

I also believe this to be a case of playing the race card before the election and, as such, it is cynical and possibly inflammatory.

Dave Walker

21 Salmon Weir

Washington Street

Cork