The phone tapping proposals are part of new measures to allow EU countries fight international criminal gangs and will make it easier for national governments to monitor bank accounts and confiscate the assets of criminals living outside their jurisdictions.

McDowell signalled that the legislation would be important in fighting the situation where "an Irish person is entitled to go to the 'costa del crime' and buy a villa there."

Fine Gael supports McDowell, but the Labour Party has said there are not enough safeguards about personal privacy and individual rights in the legislation. The party will table amendments, when the bill is debated in detail next week, seeking a monitoring mechanism to ensure any information gathered is not misused.

The fact that the minister delivered his entire secondstage speech in Irish was commented upon by several of his political opponents, as McDowell has only spoken in Irish a handful of times in his Oireachtas career.

"I know he has the cupla focal, but it is highly unusual for this minister to deliver a speech in Irish. It would immediately raise questions in my mind to look carefully at the detail in this piece of legislation, " Labour's Joe Costello said.

However, a spokesperson for McDowell said the minister "liked to make speeches in the Seanad in Irish" and had done so previously.

The proposals to facilitate the interception of telecommunication messages between EU member states for criminal investigation purposes are contained in Part 3 of the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Bill.

The legislation would make it possible for police forces in other EU states to monitor telecom messages of a person in Ireland while "retrospective permission" was being sought. The legislation says that any information gathered could only be used if permission was ultimately granted. It is not clear how this situation would operate.

Independent Senator Joe O'Toole, who spoke in the Seanad last week, said that the monitoring proposals "should not lead to a deterioration in the rights of citizens". He warned that "there has to be a full debate to ensure that people's rights are safeguarded. Otherwise, this proposal will become a pension fund for lawyers who challenge every line in the legislation."

McDowell's legislation would also make it a legal obligation on all telecommunication companies to facilitate phone tapping and email monitoring of people, regardless of where they are located in the EU.

Irish authorities could refuse requests for assistance where it was believed that state security interests would be threatened, or where it was thought assistance might result in a person being subjected to torture.