Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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180. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine how his Department engages with non-governmental bodies and private companies on compiling and distributing information leaflets to farmers, such as the example of a recent leaflet distributed to farmers across the State (details supplied) and the GDPR rules around sharing information from a private company in this way; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43027/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department only shares personal data with third parties where there is a legal basis to do so and in line with our obligations under Article 6 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Regarding the specific example cited by the Deputy-  Irish Bioenergy association IrBEA compiled the content for the Green Waste leaflet and no personal data was shared with IrBEA by my Department.

A third party was procured for the purposes of printing of leaflets to be distributed to all farmers and with whom names, addresses and eircodes were shared for that purpose.  A contract was in place between the Department and the printing company under which it was permissible to share this data. Such contracts are subject to confidentiality agreements which I can confirm were in place in this in this instance.