The number of An Garda Síochána closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in Dublin has been raised with the Minister for Justice by one of his Dáil colleagues. The answer is 209.
The presumption – as evidenced by the subsequent comments of Fine Gael TD James Geoghan – is that Dublin does not have enough CCTV cameras. Certainly, based on the figures quoted by Geoghan, we lag far behind cities such as London and Paris.
Such simplistic comparisons may draw publicity, but they are of little value. The issue is more complex than the figures imply. As the Irish Council for Civil Liberties has pointed out, the Garda have access to hundreds if not thousands of CCTV cameras operated by Dublin City Council and installed on private premises. The extent of their reach was demonstrated when the Garda released photographs – gleaned from the sources available to them – of 99 “persons of interest” they wanted to identify in connection with the 2023 Dublin riots.
CCTV obviously has a significant role to play in modern policing but any initiative to invest resources in this area must be led by An Garda Síochána and not politicians. It must also give adequate weight to the wider civil liberties issues raised by the ICCL and others.
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The issue from the perspective of Garda Commissioner Drew Harris does not appear to be the availability of CCTV footage but the workload involved in processing it. He told an Oireachtas Committee last year that the manual processing of footage was becoming unfeasible and ineffective.
The obvious solution to this problem is the use of digital tools, primarily facial recognition technology, about which the ICCL has profoundly serious concerns, claiming it engages with many fundamental human rights.
Finding an acceptable balance between these competing imperatives would make a much bigger contribution to public safety than trying to match other cities camera-for-camera.
