Ms Moyagh Murdock:

However, we are in the process of finishing a very robust privacy impact assessment, which everybody is required to do under the GDPR regulations of May 2018. We started that early on. We conducted academic research on the effectiveness and legitimacy of doing this and because it has not been done anywhere else or in any other jurisdiction of which we know, there is no unequivocal evidence to say that it would not be beneficial to society. We have met the Data Protection Commissioner, and in her words, it may seem like a good idea but that does not mean that one can just go ahead and do it. We need to follow the protocols and do what the Data Protection Commissioner sets out. We have almost everything complete. We have the technical interfaces ready to go. I will be honest and say that the holding up of the legislation in the Dáil has meant that this is not going to be prioritised this year because the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, OPC, the legislators and the Department staff are fully tied up trying to get this legislation through. It will be 2019 before we can see that come to fruition. We are fully committed to doing that and want to make sure that the legitimacy of what we are proposing cannot be challenged and we want to do it properly.