AI in policing: Ireland
Every documented deployment of artificial intelligence by law enforcement in Ireland currently recorded on this site, drawn from the deployment tracker. Each entry is tied to a published source and carries the date it was last checked.
Deployments
IE An Garda Siochana Retrospective Facial Recognition Proposed
- Legal basis
- Garda Siochana (Recording Devices) Act 2023, as proposed to be amended by the Garda Siochana (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025
- Oversight
- Subject to ongoing legislative process
Irish government documents describe proposed retrospective facial recognition technology for serious crime, including searching CCTV, intended to automate searches that would otherwise require manually reviewing very large volumes of footage. Live facial recognition was separately reported as under consideration for terrorism, national security and missing-persons cases, subject to stated safeguards. No operational deployment confirmed at the time of the source reviewed. Update, verified August 2026: the legislation has advanced materially. The General Scheme was approved and published in December 2023 and referred for pre-legislative scrutiny; the Justice Committee reported in February 2024. On 11 December 2025 the Minister for Justice secured cabinet approval to publish the Garda Siochana (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025, which would allow An Garda Siochana to sort, filter and compare images from CCTV, mobile phone footage and evidence submitted by the public, for suspected arrestable offences, missing person searches and State security. Safeguards including advance written authorisation by a Chief Superintendent were set out in the General Scheme, with detail deferred to a Code of Practice to be drafted by An Garda Siochana and laid before the Oireachtas. Contested: the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Digital Rights Ireland argue in a joint briefing that the Bill introduces a new term, 'biometric analysis', which overlaps with the EU AI Act's definitions of biometric categorisation and biometric identification without adopting the Act's terminology or safeguards. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission separately described the proposals as a radical upturn in State policing powers and called for safeguards written into the statute rather than left to a future Code of Practice. Still not operational: this remains proposed legislation, not a deployed system.
Source: Department of Justice (Ireland) press release; Oireachtas Library & Research Service · last checked 2026-08-24