Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Since 5 February 2003, the US requires in-flying airlines to provide the US authorities with electronic access to 34 items of data on passengers. While some passenger data systems contain a limited amount of information, others contain far more extensive data, such as details of past travel, car and hotel reservations, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, residential and business addresses and credit card information. Therefore, in respect of fundamental privacy rights versus an advancing Big Brother state, this potentially expansive agreement should not be entered into lightly or behind closed doors. EU member states should not allow themselves to be bullied into applying an agreement which fails to guarantee the data protection rights of its citizens or, at the very least, the equivalent of the data protection rights they enjoy in their own states.

In 2003 and 2004, the European Parliament passed a number of resolutions which were highly critical of the PNR agreement. It then took a case to the European Court of Justice, ECJ, contesting both the legal basis for the agreement and its content. Unfortunately, when the ECJ upheld the European Parliament's challenge last summer, it decided not to address the question of the agreement's content in its ruling because, on the basis of the "legal grounds" challenge, it determined that the agreement should be annulled anyway. In a cynical move, the Council of the European Union, in which members of the Cabinet participate, decided last Friday to change the treaty basis on which to permit the agreement. This decision takes no account of the European Parliament's legitimate challenge to the substantive content of the agreement, which I have no doubt would have been upheld by the ECJ had it taken the time to examine it. This is not a transport issue, rather it is a justice issue. Shame on the governments of Europe for pretending otherwise.

The US PNR requirement forms part of the so-called "war on terror" and one of the first casualties of this war has undoubtedly been civil liberties. We have only to look to the rights denied prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the programme of extraordinary rendition to be sure of this. The proposed PNR agreement would tie the fundamental data protection and privacy rights of Irish citizens flying to the US to ever-changing and ever more regressive US laws because the agreement stipulates that the US Department of Homeland Security can process PNR data "in accordance with applicable US laws". Therefore, if the law changes in the US, the US Government can then change how it processes and stores PNR data on European citizens, the period for which this data can be held and how and who it can be passed to without renegotiation of the PNR agreement between itself and the EU.

No one has stopped to consider whether the fundamental rights-infringing PNR agreement in operation so far has actually contributed to a reduction in crime. Why did the Government not question whether the arrangement has been effective before proposing its continuation and approval to the Houses of Oireachtas? At a seminar on the PNR to which air carriers were invited earlier this year, they were asked how many planes had been diverted or sent back to their place of origin after taking off because of PNR data on one or more passengers and how many times should these planes not have been diverted. The companies replied that planes were diverted ten times and that on all these occasions, the alarm raised turned out to be false.

Ireland can opt out of this agreement and can negotiate an agreement of its own if the need arises. Alternatively, it can take the lead within the Council of the European Union in demanding a more acceptable agreement. I call on the Government to amend the proposed agreement before its adoption to ensure that, at the very least, the annual joint review includes a requirement for an evaluation of the agreement covering both the detail of its operation and its effectiveness against its stated objective of "fighting terrorism" and that any change in US, EU or Irish data protection provisions relevant to the operation of the agreement would prompt an immediate and transparent renegotiation of the agreement requiring further approval by both Houses of the Oireachtas.

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