The Government will approve the use of body cameras for Gardaí today.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan will ask his Cabinet colleagues for approval to draft a bill to make it legal for the Gardaí to wear body cameras.

The Garda Commissioner Drew Harris previously said they might be ruled out because of the potential high cost.

The Government is considering the impact they would have on the right to privacy when drafting new laws.

The Data Protection Commissioner is also expected to have input on the bill that the department hopes to have drafted by the end of the year.

Last year, Garda representatives said the funding required to introduce body cams would be money well spent.

It was estimated the State could spend up to €80m fitting members of the force with the recording equipment.

Antoinette Cunningham, President of the AGSI, said: "With the increased use of mobile phones, many incidents that the Gardaí are involved in, you see snippets or pieces of mobile phone data being released - quite often giving a wrong impression of the incident in its entirety"

"I suppose, if we had the body worn cameras, we would be able to play the incident from start to finish and give a very clear account of events as they occurred."

Reporting by Sean Defoe