Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will finish up. I better not keep the committee here all day.

Amendments Nos. 10 and 15 are essentially the same as an amendment submitted previously by Senator Higgins. These amendments also try to address the problem of coerced consent. It is vital that the Bill gives people a mechanism to opt out of the "once-only" principle and to indicate that it would be their preference to give each of the specified bodies their data separately and that they do not find it a burden to provide their data to specified bodies on a case by case basis. In response to what was essentially the same amendment on Report Stage in the Seanad, the Minister provided three defences of the Government’s position, and none of them was relevant to the problem Senator Higgins was trying to address.

Firstly, he referred to the right to object to the processing of one’s data as specified in the GDPR. The right to object is not a remedy for coerced consent. If we do not provide the option for a person to opt out of ad hocprocessing of his or her data, then that person will not be able to access public services or welfare services without first consenting to large scale reusing of his or her data. The right to object in the GDPR is a right to object to already existing processing. On the basis of this Bill, a person’s consent would, by that point, already have been coerced. The right to object as a process or mechanism to opt out of ad hocprocessing or as a way to choose providing data to specified bodies would involve recourse to the courts system and the Data Protection Commission.

It is an odd suggestion from the Minister. He wants citizens to have to go through an arduous and difficult court process to access their basic human rights. In any case, the right to object would not even address the problem for coerced consent. With all due respect, listening to the Seanad debates, I am not sure if there is a full understanding around the problems of coerced consent. During that debate, the Minister said that when a person presents to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection to apply for a social welfare payment that "it could be inferred that there is consent already contained in that by virtue of the fact that they have presented themselves to look for that particular support or service from the State”.

I mentioned this in my Second Stage speech and I mention it here again because it shows a fundamental failure to understand the nature of consent. That is a worrying statement as far as we are concerned. People apply for social welfare support because they are vulnerable and need help so it is strange that the Minister of State could extrapolate from that that at the same time these vulnerable people automatically consent to such widespread sharing of their data with approximately 150 other public bodies, via the single customer view database. It is amazing that the Minister of State who has responsibility for the biggest data sharing project in the history of the State should reveal such a fundamental understanding of the nature of consent.

In refusing to accept Senator Alice-Mary Higgins's amendment on the data sharing agreements that the Bill makes necessary, the Minister of State referred to: "A fairly protracted public consultation process that goes on well in advance of the agreements being set out." The public consultation process that the Minister of State mentioned is of course welcome but it is irrelevant to those people, no matter how rare they are, who would want to provide their data on a case by case basis. The public consultation process may permit the individuals in question some kind of input into the process on data sharing agreements and it may provide some welcome assurances on data processing but it would not address the specific problem of coerced consent.

The Minister of State rejected Senator Higgins's amendment on the basis that: "We do not want to have a situation where every single individual would have to be contacted in advance of the data being used." Maybe the Minister of State misunderstood the nature of Senator Higgins's amendment; if not we would see this as disingenuous. There would be no reason whatsoever to contact every single individual in advance of the data being used. Most people would prefer the once only principle and have no problem with their data being shared with all of the listed, specified bodies. Clearly most people will see it as easier, handier and vastly more efficient to just have to provide their data once but when a person's data is first collected, which at that moment is via registration for a public services card, but a person must also then be able to opt out of further processing without their consent. To make access to the State's services dependent on consent is a form of safe coercion.