Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In conclusion, I thank all of our members and witnesses. Some were looking in on Thursday when we were asking various questions of our witnesses. Data sharing in itself is possibly a very good thing if the rules and the governance are there. We have all benefited from technology and the internet. I would have been a beneficiary of Dr. Jennings as a student of University College Dublin, UCD, when the internet was only starting and one was still looking at exam results on walls and ringing people to find out what was happening.

Technology is a good thing but the message coming loud and clear from today, to summarise it, is that this particular Data-Sharing and Governance Bill is not fit for purpose as far as all the witnesses are concerned and that we should really just be sending it back to the Department and saying to improve its efforts and to address the concerns that we and the witnesses have. I made points on Thursday and I am not going to repeat them all. One wonders how things can happen. If somebody wins EuroMillions, suddenly 60 or 70 people have just had a look at that person's file, because they were interested. At least there was a record that people had done it. How can 950,000 breath tests can just appear on a system without a record? Maybe somebody somewhere knows. Maybe a record exists and that will all come out.

Dr. Jennings referred to biometric security. Are we talking about people in social welfare offices and so on having to provide their thumbprints before they can input or access systems all the time? The greatest security is trust. Unfortunately, Irish society has seen systems break down and not work the way we would have expected them to work, whether banking, or personnel, payroll and related systems, PPARS, or various other systems. That undermines our capacity. There are simple things like passenger information. One could be looking at the bus and it could suddenly vanish. It is as simple as that in one way. That is data one relies on and then it is not reliable.