Gardai to video serious crime interviews

Gardai will be obliged to video record their interviews with persons questioned in connection with serious crime under a new scheme to be implemented across the State over the next 18 months.

Some 200 of the State's 700 Garda stations are to be equipped with specialised facilities to allow for the mandatory audio-visual recording of interviews with people detained in Garda custody under provisions of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984, the Offences Against the State Act 1939, and the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act 1996.

Interviews will be recorded only when the crime involved carries a sentence of five years or more.

The scheme will be implemented in Garda district headquarters around the State and in larger stations. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, expects the introduction of the scheme to cost more than £10 million, with annual running costs of about £1 million. He said the implementation of the scheme would involve "a massive investment in time and resources, both human and financial".

The electronic recording scheme is being introduced on foot of the recommendations of a committee chaired by the President of the Circuit Court, Mr Justice Esmond Smyth. The committee has been monitoring and evaluating a pilot scheme of both audio and audio-video recording of Garda questioning of detainees in selected Garda stations since May 1994.

Mr O'Donoghue said the recommendations of the committee had been accepted by the Government in full.

He said all existing interview suites in Garda stations would have to be refurbished and soundproofed to ensure a recording of sufficient quality. Most gardai would have to undergo training in their obligations when recording interviews. Contemporaneous notes would still be taken by gardai and produced in court. Only if the statement were contested would the transcript of the tape or the tape itself come into play.

There is only one exception to the general requirement to record interviews electronically. A chief superintendent or rank above may decide to interrupt recording if he feels it is "absolutely necessary" to allow confidential information to be obtained "in life-threatening situations".

Mr O'Donoghue said the most obvious example of where such a course of action might be taken was a kidnapping case.

He said the scheme would provide "a real and substantial guarantee to both detainees and Garda interviewers alike that any statements in connection with the investigation of a criminal offence are made and taken correctly and in accordance with law.

"The fact that there will be an audio-visual recording will obviously mean that the possibility of an accused person saying the Garda Siochana obtained the statement involuntarily . . . is, to say the least, greatly reduced."

He said the scheme would address a situation whereby trials were being lengthened or delayed as a result of argument about whether statements were made to gardai voluntarily or under duress. Frequently these arguments "became a trial within a trial", resulting in "very long delays".

He hoped the introduction of the scheme would result in shorter and cheaper trials and speed up the criminal justice process.

He said the magnitude of the expenditure demonstrated his commitment and the commitment of the Government to "ensuring that the public enjoys full confidence in the investigation of crime and the criminal justice system as a whole". The scheme would be a benefit not only to the Garda Siochana but to the accused and the criminal justice system.