Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, made a statement in the Dáil today rejecting claims that the public were under mass surveillance.
This comes following claims that the Garda Ombudsman had accessed the call logs of Irish journalists’ phones without permission.
The Justice Minister defended the current laws around surveillance, insisting they are needed to tackle serious crime and terrorism.
“You are making statements there without any evidence, you are saying that the public are being subject to this.
“There is no evidence that the public are being subject to widespread or unsupervised mass surveillance.
“We have law and by the way these laws came through this Oireachtas, were discussed in detail.”
Mick Wallace, TD, claimed as many as 40 requests a day are being made for access to phone records.