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

Subsection (2) provides that "The Minister for Social Protection may request the Health Service Executive to furnish to him or her personal data held by the Health Service Executive when he or she requires the personal data for the purpose of calculating the means of persons". The HSE is retaining information on a particular applicant who goes about his or her business in applying to establish his or her eligibility for a medical card. The HSE will not decide how much information is furnished because, according to this legislation, if enacted, once the Minister for Social Protection makes the request that he or she want all this information, the HSE will be obligated to pass it on. The requester is the one who will decide on the amount of information that will be given, as the opposed to the person who is currently retaining the information.

Subsection (4) provides that "Notwithstanding anything contained in the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003, but subject to this section, a person who receives a request made in accordance with subsection (1), (2) or (3)", as already discussed. Quite clearly, there is even an attempt in this legislation to dilute and diminish the protections of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003. There is an effort in that respect in terms of this legislation. I have concerns about this section, and I know the Minister of State will try to convince me forever and a day that there is no cause for them. There has been a creeping effort by the system over a period of time to gather further information on citizens through their interactions with the State. This happens slowly but incrementally all the time. We see further evidence of such creeping effort in every item of legislation that has been passed in this House in recent years. We have the Data Protection Act to provide protection, but at the same time all the other information is being collated on a continual basis.

We should not have hiding places for vagabonds and others but this is about medical card eligibility. This is about a person making an application to establish whether he or she is entitled to a medical card. One would have to ask the fundamental question about the necessity for being so intrusive into people's lives in terms of the potential information that is gathered by a legitimate application being passed on to other agencies of the State.

In the broader context of his summing up about the legislation being rammed through, it is in a way because the programme for Government, that novel, states that it is two weeks from the passing of one stage of a Bill to another.

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