Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration (Deputy Jim O'Callaghan): I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this important Bill before the House. Electronic evidence is now central to almost every criminal investigation. While data flows globally, law enforcement authorities across Europe are often in need of foreign-held evidence for domestic cases, including data held by service providers in this jurisdiction. Electronic data is volatile and can be easily deleted, altered or moved. The emergence of cloud computing, where the exact physical location of data is often dynamic, has brought another set of jurisdictional difficulties for criminal investigations.

Existing means of legal co-operation between countries, namely mutual legal assistance, are slow and complex. As a result, law enforcement and judicial authorities often experience difficulties in accessing electronic evidence relevant to an investigation, rendering prosecutions ineffective. Increasingly, law enforcement has become reliant on voluntary co-operation with service providers but this method lacks enforcement power, fails to protect fundamental rights and leaves it up to service providers to determine the legitimacy of requests.

It is to address these deficiencies that I am introducing the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation on Electronic Evidence and Other Matters) Bill. The Bill delivers on the programme for Government commitment to implement the EU e-evidence package. That package provides a clear, legally certain and efficient process for law enforcement in one member state to directly request electronic evidence from service providers established in another member state, while protecting fundamental rights....

Deputy Cormac Devlin: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation on Electronic Evidence and Other Matters) Bill 2026. The objective of this Bill is to support efforts to tackle crime being facilitated over the Internet.

The large drugs cartel being organised on an encrypted app, the fraud run from a server in another country, the grooming of a child through a social media account or the money laundered through a chain of digital transactions - none of these crimes respects a border. The evidence sits on servers that may be in Dublin, in Frankfurt, in any country or in a data centre on another continent. The development of the online ecosystem has outpaced existing legislation, and even where national governments have introduced legislation, the transnational nature of the problem means an EU-wide response is warranted and necessary to address the issue.

Today, when a Garda investigation needs evidence held on servers in another member state, the process is slow. A European investigation order can take up to 120 days. A mutual legal assistance request takes, on average, ten months. Think about what ten months mean in a live investigation. Data is deleted, trails go cold and victims ultimately wait. A suspect who should go before a court remains at large. That delay is not a technical inconvenience; it is a gap that major criminals regularly exploit.

This Bill closes that gap. It transposes the EU e-evidence directive and gives further effect to the e-evidence regulation. Together, they create two new tools. The first is the European production order. This will allow a judicial authority in one member state to obtain electronic evidence directly from a service provider in another. It must respond within ten days or, in an emergency, within eight hours. It is ten days instead of ten months. The second is the European preservation order, which allows authorities to require that specific data be preserved so it is not lost while a fuller request is prepared.

The scale here is significant. It is expected that up to 600 service providers could designate an addressee in Ireland. The number of production orders issued to providers based here is anticipated to exceed 300,000 every year. Our own authorities are likely to issue around 2,000 orders to providers in other member states to advance investigations here at home. These are not abstract figures. Each order represents an investigation into a real crime affecting real people....

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. I welcome the introduction of this Bill which will ensure that electronic evidence needed for criminal investigations can be requested by law enforcement from service providers. What I am thinking about is the apprehension of drug lords who are ruining our society and causing so much mayhem in families. We see youngsters committing suicide and the disruption of families. As I said, the mayhem it causes is terrible. I support any way that we can apprehend these people rapidly because they have our society completely ruined. It is happening in most rural places, villages and towns, and of course our cities. The effect it is having on family life is desperate.

In relation to international co-operation, is this only with countries within the European Union's jurisdiction? It needs to go further than that. We need to have the same co-operation with countries outside of the European Union. Every one of us here knows they are coming from every part of the world. My worry, as I have said to the Minister here before, is our exposure along our coast. In many places even Kerry, we no longer have Garda stations. I worry, and many people worry, that drugs are coming in along the shore at night when they know nobody is monitoring or knows what is going on. We need more surveillance for that reason alone. That is a very important reason.

We know the existing means to get the electronic evidence needed for criminal investigation is slow and complex, and depends on the goodwill of service providers. When we are in the vein of apprehending criminals, we should not be impeded in any way. It should not be down to goodwill as to whether they give the evidence or not. It should be mandatory that they give it. I am just talking about drugs and the desperate situation that we have in our country at the present time. We know the Garda is doing very good work in apprehending big amounts of drugs but that only tells you the amounts that are getting through. The disruption caused and the harm they are doing to our youngsters is terrible.

More and more cases depend on electronic evidence, so any improvements in this process is welcome if it ensures criminal investigations can be progressed in a timely manner.

My concerns, however, relate to the total cost of implementing this and running it each year. So far, the financial implications amount to a budget allocation of €73,000 for pay costs in 2026. In the context of the costs we have today with other things, that is a minimal amount of funding. I do not know how that can be effective or adequate. A total of €3 million in capital expenditure has also been allocated for the building of an IT system necessary to connect to the EU decentralised IT system. I must make way for my colleague.....