Request to meet Data Commissioner over city CCTV

Cork City Council is to write to both the Data Commissioner and the Garda Commissioner to emphasise the need for public CCTV in Cork. The council is also to ask the Data Commissioner to appear before the council to explain what issues GDPR raises in the use of private CCTV by gardaí.

A motion to this effect was brought by Labour Party councillor Peter Horgan to the latest full meeting of Cork City Council on Monday 12 October.

Cllr Horgan said that he was disappointed that the response he received from the council's Director of Services for Local Area Development and Operations John Stapleton was a response he had received verbatim 234 days previously.

Stapleton said that the expediting of a public CCTV scheme for the Loughmahon Park and its surrounding areas was pursuant on Code of Practice for such schemes being established by Government, which has not yet been completed.

Cllr Horgan said that local residents wanted CCTV established in their areas, and while he said that this would not be a "silver bullet" in the deterrence of crime, he said it was one measure which could be effective.

He highlighted the recent case of Felix, a cat from the Blackrock area who was abducted and abused and later had to be put down.

"If we had public CCTV in that area, it could have been accessed straight away, and maybe there would have been more impetus for the authorities to catch them, and maybe Felix would be with his family today," he said.

Other councillors also supported the motion, and said that residents in their areas backed the installation of CCTV cameras. The motion passed almost unanimously, with only two councillors voting against.

Solidarity councillor Brian McCarthy, who voted against the motion, said that it sought to reduce the oversight needed for CCTV in public spaces by eroding "vital public protections".

He said that studies had found little to no impact of CCTV on deterring violent crime.

"The UK has more CCTV than almost anywhere else, one camera for every eleven people, and studies have found that this mass surveillance has little or no impact on the crime rate.

"Mass surveillance is a threat to civil liberties and it raises immediate concerns for the inevitable erosion of the right to privacy that would cause," he said.

Cllr Horgan rejected that his motion was seeking to reduce oversight of CCTV in public spaces.

This article was produced with the support of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme funded by Coimisiún na Meán.