Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not think this was an isolated case.

The Data Protection Commission was criticised in one of the reports. I understand Ms Dixon said the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2015 was very hard to follow and unclear. She was critical on the basis that it was not clear how the whole system worked. She was accused of using pejorative and sensationalist language. I will make one point in her defence on that issue. We had a special debate in the Dáil yesterday on the public services card. The card was introduced in the 2005 Act. Section 263 has been amended six times in three different pieces of primary legislation. A further provision on which the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection relies in relation to the public services card project is section 241, which has been amended 28 times by 11 different enactments. This demonstrates, from a legislative point of view, a lack of consolidation. We have here a provision that has been amended 30 or 40 times, including every year in the Social Welfare Act. The legislation that underpins the public services card has been amended at least 50 times. How could any reasonable citizen be expected to know what legislation he or she is looking at? The commissioner's criticism was, therefore, very valid. It applies to social protection legislation because it is not consolidated often enough but probably also applies to many other public bodies for which legislation is repeatedly amended. How could anyone find their way back through the 50 different amendments?

This discussion has been nice and rosy so far. However, it would be remiss of me not to voice the numerous complaints people have made since the introduction of GDPR. I know GDPR is needed for good reason but citizens are being strangled by it. GDPR is designed to help citizens and I will give one example of how the legislation the Data Protection Commission is enforcing works on the ground. I have umpteen examples but I will give this example because it arose last weekend. There is an old couple who live in my constituency. The husband, who is 96 years of age, is deaf, has dementia and is confined to bed. His wife is 86 years of age and is not faring much better. They live on their own and use a community alert device operated via their landline to buzz if something happens. Lightning knocked out their telephone last Friday night. When a carer phoned Eir on her mobile phone from the couple's home she was told the provider could not speak to her as she was not the account holder. The woman of the house then spoke but was told that as she was not the account holder, she could not speak on her husband's behalf. Her husband is deaf and cannot speak on the phone. The 85-year old woman was then told that if the couple changed the account on the website from the husband's name into the wife's name, the company would speak to the woman. The husband and wife are both bedridden. I got on the case and I have been involved in identical cases.

I will give another example involving another good neighbour. Every Deputy can recite a litany of these cases. The Data Protection Commission gets flak on this one issue from many people. People may or may not agree with some of what is going on. The second case involves an old person living in an isolated area. The landline went down and because there is no mobile signal where the person lives, they could not make a mobile call. A good neighbour who visits every day volunteered to ring on the old person's behalf but the provider would not speak with the neighbour as this person is not the account holder. Does Ms Dixon accept that in extreme cases the legislation can, when implemented as the commission intended, cause enormous personal hardship in a many cases? Does she understand my point?