Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No. 407B, dated 2 March, is from Mr. Niall Cody, chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, providing information requested by the committee regarding the Revenue's use of data access requests under the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011.

It states that, on the advice of the Attorney General, Revenue has not made any disclosure requests to communications service providers since 2018, but that this was as a result of legal proceedings rather than GDPR legislation. It also states that the Department of Justice is working on a Bill to replace the Act, which will take account of the recent Supreme Court referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union and other relevant rulings. It goes on to say that Revenue continues to investigate all forms of serious tax and duty offences using the wide range of powers available to it. At our meeting of 11 March, we decided to note and publish this item of correspondence.

Deputies will remember that what is being referred in the context of the CJEU case is the murder case involving Mr. Dwyer and mobile phone data in that case. Deputy Catherine Murphy wishes to speak about this item.