An Garda Siochana

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.

Update, November 2026. The Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill 2025 became law when the President signed it (news release of 16 July 2026); the enacted text is the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Act 2026, No. 26 of 2026. Its new Part 6A permits Garda personnel to carry out "biometric analysis" (defined to exclude "biometric identification") for preventing, investigating, detecting or prosecuting arrestable offences, protecting state security, searching for missing persons and cooperating with other law enforcement agencies, only on documents obtained in an investigation and only retrospectively, with results reviewed by a member. The Act commences on days set by the Minister for Justice by order, and codes of practice must be approved by both Houses. The Act does not itself require the advance written authorisation by a Chief Superintendent that the General Scheme had described; it sets conditions in section 43C and leaves procedures to the codes of practice. In the Seanad on Tuesday 23 June 2026, Senator Alice-Mary Higgins said the "biometric analysis" term is a way to "sidestep" the EU AI Act's requirements, while the Minister, Jim O'Callaghan, said biometric analysis is "a means of filtering or sorting information" rather than comparison against a database (Biometric Update, 26 June 2026). No Garda deployment has been reported, and the Act takes effect only when commenced by ministerial order.