Speaking after today’s consideration stage debate on the Justice Bill Gerry Carroll said: "My amendment today was built on a simple principle: if the state takes your DNA and holds it on a police database for years, the very least it can do is tell you so in plain writing.”
"This legislation rightly gives people the right to a review of their retained material. But a right you've never been told about isn’t a right at all. You can't appeal a decision you never knew was taken. The Assembly missed the chance to put that on the face of this Bill today."
"The Bill’s new powers around police photographs should alarm everyone. The Department is being handed an enabling power to build a framework for retaining and using police photographs by regulation, with a fraction of the scrutiny primary legislation gets. A 'framework for photographs' in 2026 means a facial-image database. This is the architecture of biometric surveillance being smuggled in through the back door, with a promise to fill in the detail later."
“Working class communities in west Belfast know exactly what it is to be watched, stopped and recorded. We need a right-based, proportionate approach to the retention of personal data which this Bill doesn’t deliver.”