Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----one does not have to declare and the payment will not be made public. Consequently, were Sean Fleming a sole trader who was giving advice or doing anything for the State, we will never know how much he is being paid because the GDPR will prevent us from knowing, which is insane. This is not the reason GDPR exists.

I must thank three journalists, namely, Danny McConnell, political editor, Fiachra Ó Cionnaith and Elaine Loughlin, who work for the Irish Examiner, for pursuing this matter. Subsequently, they got the Data Protection Commissioner effectively to state she does not understand why the advice has been issued or in what context and that it is not justifiable. The Irish Examinerran a story on this issue earlier this week.

We must pursue this matter in the strongest way possible. These are serious public sums and this will go on for years. A dangerous precedent is being set whereby others will be able to use this loophole, potentially, to not have the amount of the payments made or costs awarded to them for various different items of work being made known. In addition, from a Data Protection Commission point of view, it looks like this situation is not appropriate. I am in the hands of the committee but we really need to pursue this matter because frankly, such a situation cannot go on. It is against the public interest, it is against what GDPR is being used for and we will not know what people are being paid in this case. Furthermore, I suspect the Department uses the non-two-payments rule for public servants to the letter of the law in many cases but yet, when it comes to situations in which people working in public bodies constitute themselves as individuals for other payments, the two-payments system does not apply to them and we will not be able to tease that out. It is a four legs good, two legs bad scenario and that cannot be allow to happen. I thank the Chair and shall take his advice.