New Irish Data Retention Laws Coming Down The Track

New Irish data retention laws governing the retention and access of electronic communications data are in the pipeline following two fresh data retention judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU"). Whilst the Government recently published the Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022 to provide a temporary fix to the incompatibility of certain provisions of Irish data retention laws with EU laws, a further Bill is coming down the track which will overhaul existing laws.

In this article we discuss two recent judgments of the CJEU and consider the key highlights of the 2022 Amendment Act, which has yet to come into force. We previously discussed the CJEU's prior ruling in GD v Commissioner of An Garda Síochána ¹, which arose as a result of a referral from the Irish Supreme Court. In that case, Mr Graham Dwyer who was convicted for murder, argued that the admission of traffic and location data retrieved by the Irish police under