Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for pointing out that provision. We can consider for what purposes the information is allowed to be used by a financial institution, and the Minister of State correctly listed the five purposes. All the subsections stand alone but we can consider subsection (b), "evaluating the risk of affording or extending credit to". That is a stand-alone measure. A financial institution could legally use this register to evaluate the risk of affording or extending credit to a person, and that could lead to a problem in the scenario I explained earlier. People could access the register to pony up new business. They could look at Timmy's credit register before giving him a call and offering him something. It would be permitted under the Bill. With that specific case, affording or extending credit to a person should be based on the person making an application or some type of request, and there should be a caveat to protect against the type of scenario I painted earlier.