Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

This company is providing the hardware, software and the data processing systems for the census process. Can the Minister of State assure us that the company has no access to the information in the census? Is he aware that the Registrar General in Scotland, where a census is also being conducted, has observed that the "sneak and peek warrants" provided for in the United States PATRIOT Act would allow the CIA or the United States Government "secretly to enter a business, either physically or virtually, conduct a search and depart without taking any tangible evidence or leaving notice of their presence." That is what American law allows to be done to American companies. Can the Minister of State guarantee that the company in question will not have access to the census information and, consequently, that the American military or intelligence services will not also have access to it?

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