Irish Justice Minister wants real-time FRT, gait biometrics in police investigative toolkit

Ireland’s Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan has announced plans to equip national police with facial recognition technology, enabling them to scan both archived and live images to identify suspects and detect child abuse imagery.

The minister intends to publish an amendment to the Recording Devices Act 2023 “in the coming months,” followed by separate legislation to permit real-time biometric identification under the European Union AI Act.

The first amendment bill will allow law enforcement agencies, following judicial authorization, to deploy facial recognition software on previously held imagery — such as CCTV footage or seized photographs — to match faces against watchlists. A second bill will extend that authority to live camera feeds, giving national police the power to flag individuals of interest in real time.

The Justice Minister has confirmed that a bill currently before the legislative branch of the Irish State to use retrospective facial recognition with mobile or CCTV footage does not allow real-time facial recognition technology. He added, however, that its deployment in future — under strict safeguards — remains a possibility for terrorism, national security, and missing-person cases. Any such provisions would need to be drafted into a subsequent bill.

Ireland’s police, known as Gardaí, is also set to receive powers to use AI to analyze gait, voice biometrics and other physiological features of suspects during criminal investigation, reports The Irish Times. A UK police advisory body recently suggested law enforcement in the Kingdom should consider adding emerging biometrics, including brainwaves, voice and gait recognition, into their portfolio as well.

Such biometrics will be used in criminal investigations alongside facial recognition to identify suspects in serious offences and to find missing people. New legislation is planned to enable their deployment in real time — alongside live facial recognition — when there’s an imminent threat to life.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the planned legislation will provide the power to utilize biometric technologies generally, which includes the use of physical, physiological or behavioral characteristics of an individual, such as face or voice biometrics as well as gait — but will not include DNA analysis and fingerprints, which come under separate legislation.

New biometric analyses will become available over time. Future tools could identify individuals by the shape of their ears or the palm vein biometrics. Technology is being developed that recognizes people by the movement of their eyes or their unique odors. All of these modalities are covered under the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which the Department of Justice says will underpin forthcoming Irish legislation.

AI will compare biometric characteristics and generate a percentage-based likelihood of a match. Garda management has long advocated for facial recognition powers to analyse the growing volume of digital evidence in criminal investigations, arguing that manually sifting through hours of CCTV footage is increasingly unfeasible.

Police Commissioner Drew Harris highlighted this challenge after the Dublin riots, when gardaí had to review 22,000 hours of footage to identify offenders. In response, the department emphasizes that new biometric powers will rest on a bedrock of human rights. Trained gardaí will review every result produced by biometric technologies to guard against errors.

By speeding up investigations, proponents argue these tools will save valuable police time, particularly where preserving life or preventing serious harm is urgent. They will also spare officers from the harrowing task of combing through thousands, or even millions, of images and videos of child sexual abuse material.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  forensics  |  gait recognition  |  Ireland  |  police  |  real-time biometrics