Mr. Barry Lowry:

The framework is very much designed to prevent that type of thing from happening. In assessing how Government, Departments and public bodies currently deal with citizen data, I would not use the term "bad" but I would use the phrase "could do better". The role of this legislation and specifically the governance around it, is to help in the journey of getting to a much better place. Through the national e-government strategy, which will be published next month, the vision is a single place that anyone can go to and find out the data held by a body, what that data has been used for and with whom it has been shared. The individual will also be able to either correct the data, ask for it to be removed or no longer used, or challenge its use. Obviously, with the investment the State has made in the systems that it has, this will not be available overnight but we will start to develop processes and mechanisms through the governance associated with this Bill, to start to deliver that over a period of time. The vision is very much that government will use data appropriately for the citizen's benefit and absolutely have checks and balances in place to make sure that the data is not used inappropriately and not retained any longer than necessary.