James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 14, to delete lines 7 and 8 and substitute the following:"(2) (a) Subject to paragraph (b), a specified person may access the National Register of Individual Health Identifiers for a relevant purpose.
(b) Subject to section 3(6) and (8), a specified person who falls within a class of specified persons prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph (which may be all specified persons) shall not, pursuant to paragraph (a), access the National Register of Individual Health Identifiers in so far as the Register contains any relevant information (individuals) that falls within a class of relevant information (individuals) prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph as a class of relevant information (individuals) which may not be so accessed by that class of specified persons.".

Section 10 provides for access to the national IHI register by the Minister and specified persons. Specified persons include health professionals, their employees and agents, health organisations, their employees and agents, and also other bodies. The potential number of specified persons is, therefore, very large. As the section stands, access under section 10 is to all of the information in the register, that is, the IHI and identifying particulars, with no provision to allow the Minister to control or restrict access by specified persons to a lesser amount of information.
As I indicated on Second Stage, it seems advisable to include a provision allowing the Minister to restrict access, as not every specified person would necessarily need access to all of the information in the IHI register in respect of an individual. While the PPSN, for example, should be a searchable element in establishing an individual's IHI, it should not be something that is universally available to any specified person accessing the register.Accordingly, the purpose of amendment No. 10 is to allow for the making of regulations to limit access to the information in the IHI register. Such regulations will require consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner and a public interest dimension as per amendment No. 7.
Amendment No. 11, which is an amendment to section 11, arises from the same principle as the amendment to section 10. Section 11 deals, among other matters, with the processing by the Minister and specified persons of the IHI and the related identifying particulars in the IHI register, and the disclosure by them of such information to another specified person for relevant purposes or to an authorised disclosee for secondary purposes. It is proposed to allow the possibility, through regulations, of restricting the processing or further processing by specified persons of certain information in the IHI register and the disclosure by them of such information to other specified persons for a relevant purpose. The notion of restricted disclosure is being additionally strengthened in respect of disclosure by specified persons to authorised disclosees by providing for the possibility that it may also extend to restricting the use of such information in regard to certain secondary purposes. Regulations made pursuant to amendment No. 11 would involve, as per amendment No. 7, consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner and having regard to the public interest.