Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My question was more about the fact that four agencies could potentially all have the same piece of information. Is there going to be a link-up between them? The last thing we want is for four agencies which all have the same piece of information to be looking at the other agencies and thinking that it is the other agencies' job to deal with it rather than their own. Where the information is stored is as important as identifying who will be acting on it. It is not the intention of the Bill - and we could perhaps make it a bit stronger - to ensure that this does not happen but there has to be some responsibility attached to the legislation beyond only the responsibility to store information in line with the GDPR. It also has to include a responsibility to ensure that information is acted on so that people do not look to their left or right and think that, even though they have the information, another body also does and then assume that the other body is acting on it. We saw that with CervicalCheck. There were people who should have been advising but who were looking at it and saying that they did not think it was definitively their job to deal with it and then putting it to one side.

It is not just a matter of taking responsibility for storing the information but also for acting on it. Perhaps we could do a bit of work on tightening that up.