Ms Helen Dixon:

In terms of the Deputy's question about whether it is within the purview of States to conduct health research in the public's interests, it absolutely is. As I mentioned, the general data protection regulation, which will become law in 2018, specially sets out in Article 9 that health research can, subject to member state law, be conducted in certain cases without the consent of individuals. Subject to appropriate legal bases being put in place and safeguards, this is entirely possible.

The Deputy mentioned anonymised data. Such data does not come within the remit of the Data Protection Acts. Once data is anonymised to that level then it is no longer personal data. What is at issue in many of the health research projects that are considered in the Bill is the use of personal data that is not in an anonymised format where it is necessary to use it in a format where an individual could still be identified.

In terms of circulating the heads of the Bill, they were not copied on any observations that the Department of Justice and Equality would make in response to memos to Government. I cannot confirm what, if any, position it took when the memo was circulated.