The Minister of Justice has not ruled out extending the period of detention for those accused of serious crime.
Mr McDowell said yesterday that under the Drug Trafficking Act, a person could be detained for a week, while the period of detention under the Offences Against the State Act was 72 hours. However, for a vicious murder, the maximum period was 12 hours.
He was proposing to extend that to 24 hours. Asked if it was enough, the Minister said: "If the Oireachtas wants me to go further, I will go further, but I do not want to introduce a very heavy-handed law in which muggers and mobile phone thieves end up being detained for 48 hours. I do not believe that is the right way to go about things."
In an interview on the RTÉ Radio programme, This Week, Mr McDowell said there was no reason why material collected from telephone tapping could not be used in evidence.
Legally speaking, it could be used in evidence, he added. "That is not the issue. The issue is that gardaí are of the view that using that regularly as evidential material in court cases, you would actually cut off valuable means of gathering criminal intelligence. It is a policy issue. It is not a legal issue."