Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Any telecommunications service provider must keep this kind of material to avoid being at the mercy of any subscriber who could claim that the bill was a complete invention and that the provider's machine had gone mad and was just thinking up bills to throw at a subscriber. These data already exist. If people want to contest their bills or claim that something extraordinary has happened, service providers can confirm that a phone in a household was used to contact the talking clock in Tokyo and left off the hook for 36 hours, which explains the enormous bill. This is how the world works at the moment. They keep such records for the purpose of their business. This will inevitably be the case. A service provider could not possibly function commercially without a contract term, which would probably be struck down as an unfair contract term if it said that nobody could ever query a bill and had to accept the bill as posted to them as being conclusive of their liability to a phone company.

This material is not being collected for the first time under this legislation. It is already subject to the supervisory functions of the Data Protection Commissioner. It is information in electronic form that refers to an individual. The Data Protection Commissioner is entitled to have access to that material to ensure it is not being abused. Under the data protection law it is unlawful to abuse that material in a way that infringes people's privacy or to make it available improperly to people who should not have access to it. These issues are all matters of law already. It is not true to suggest that this measure is creating either a new database or one that is uncontrolled.

Deputy Costello asked whether this would be safely kept. It is in the exclusive interest of a service provider to keep this information for its own purposes. It would not be possible to run a phone service without keeping data of this kind. The only variable issue is the length of time the data are kept before being erased. That is the only issue that arises in terms of storage. However, it must be stored for the purposes I mentioned. I do not know whether the service providers will now reduce their holding time to three years as a matter of fact. They need to be advised by their lawyers as to whether the Statute of Limitations applies and whether it would be wise for them to keep data for six years, which, I understand, would be the normal contract period for querying a bill, rather than for three years. However, that is a matter for them. I do not need to worry about it as they can look after themselves.

However, none of this imposes an obligation with which they are not already complying. No new expense is being cast on them by this measure. In so far as data of this kind are kept, this is a particular statutory provision allowing the commissioner of the Garda Síochána to request its retention and to allow senior Garda officers access to it. This does not mean it is open to a telephone service provider to put details of Deputy Costello's or my bill on the front page of The Irish Times and reveal whom we had rung two days previously. Existing privacy laws and data protection laws prevent a service provider from giving, for example, to a private detective an account of whom a subscriber has rung. All that material is covered by general privacy law as well as by data protection law. I do not believe this measure has any civil liberties implication. To the extent to which there is, it is no change on the present situation.

In preparation for the independent legislation, which I had anticipated, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform engaged in a major consultation process involving at least two public meetings. The Department effectively invited all parties it believed had a direct interest in the matter to communicate with it. This was attended by the media and was the subject of wide publicity at the time. It was accessible on the Department's website. It is not as if this process or the issues have been kept in secret. We went through a very extensive consultation procedure. At that time, I intended to introduce legislation in this area that would be separate from the Bill before the House. As I said earlier, this legislation is the appropriate vehicle for making these changes because the Data Protection Commissioner metaphorically put a gun to my head and the EU took away a gun that I thought would be pressed to the other side of my temple.

I know the Deputies are concerned about the procedure when a Bill initiated in the Dáil is amended in the Seanad. Deputy Ó Snodaigh is labouring under a particular disability in this regard because he does not have any colleagues in the Seanad who could have kept him informed of the progress of this Bill in that House. I acknowledge, to some extent, his argument that the new sections of the Bill have come out of the blue from his perspective. If one's party is not represented in the Seanad, it is desirable to keep one's eye on that House's consideration of legislation that is likely to be sent back to this House. One's researchers should be able to follow the debate legislation of this kind on the Internet, for example. In the absence of close co-ordination between Deputies and Senators, I accept that legislation that is returned to this House in an amended form may appear like a bolt from the blue.

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