Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One can interpret the matter both ways. The reason I tabled the amendment was to find out what would be said by the Minister of State. The Revenue Commissioners may request the HSE to furnish it with personal data held by the HSE when the Revenue Commissioners requires the personal data for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty or other charge payable to the commissioners. That is fair enough, but the point I am making is that people should be informed well in advance of making an application for what they believe is a medical card. If they feel the information being sought is too intrusive, for whatever reason, they should be informed well in advance. People should have a right to information, including the information retained on them. This is the issue of major concern. We should be quite clear that not everybody is fully aware of the Data Protection Act. The Department of Health was not even fully aware of it, and there was a difficulty in recent days with the Guthrie cards. We must be up-front with citizens. If they make an application for a medical card, any detail supplied for determining eligibility, including very sensitive personal data, can and will be transferred to other Departments, if requested, on foot of discussion with the Data Protection Commissioner. However, every citizen should be informed that sensitive information included in an application form could be transferred to other agencies of the State. The State should be duty-bound to inform citizens of this. That is my issue of concern.

Despite all that is noble about what the Minister of State said about subsections (7) and (8), subsection (4) of section 8 concerns me. More often than not, when we have passed legislation, we ask why we did not tease it out further. This relates to my original point, that is, that the legislation is being rammed through the Dáil.

It was published only last week, following which we dealt with Second Stage. Today we are dealing with Committee and Remaining Stages, following which it will be out the gap. There has been no discussion on it with stakeholders and Deputies have not had an opportunity - unless they did so over the weekend with the Data Commissioner - to tease out the detail of it, the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 and Health Acts 1970 and 2008, which are substantial bodies of legislation. We are expected to pass this legislation without having had the opportunity to explore it in detail, which is at variance with decent parliamentary democracy and with what is stated in the programme for Government, namely, that there would be a minium of two weeks between various Stages from publication to Final Stage. That has not happened. This legislation is being rammed through for reasons I do not know. I cannot understand the urgency of passing this legislation.

In passing this legislation we will be agreeing to sweeping powers with regard to personal data. The definition of "sensitive" and so on is defined in the Data Protection Acts. We are in my view passing legislation tonight that will allow for the transfer of data, which the Minister of State may not consider sensitive but which is sensitive to the applicant, without informing the applicant in advance of signing a declaration for medical card eligibility that such information could be transferred to other agencies of the State. There is an obligation and onus on the State to inform citizens about this.

This is rushed legislation. I will be opposing section 8.

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