Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 November 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Chapter 12 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 13 - Timeliness of Income Support Claim Processing
Chapter 14 - Customer Service - Development of Income Support Application Forms

9:00 am

Mr. John McKeon:

It is unfair to call it a threat. The context there, which is important to point out, is that we got the draft report from the Data Protection Commissioner, which ran to a number of hundreds of pages, at the end of August 2018. We were asked to respond in a period of about four weeks. We had to consult with the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and it was simply not possible to meet that deadline. We indicated we needed a period of three months to do so. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner responded to say it did not accept that more time than four weeks was needed but agreed to give us eight weeks. In that situation, we had to reply to say we really needed the three months, to point out that we were entitled to due process and to say that if it was necessary we would take steps to ensure we got due process.