Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

During the summer other Deputies and I were continually contacted by people who were increasingly concerned about Irish Water. There are three elements to their concerns: first, they are angry with being obliged to pay for water; second, they are worried about what they are signing up to and what the financial implications will be; and, third, they are troubled about supplying their personal public service, PPS, numbers to what is, in effect, a private company. They cannot understand the requirement to provide such a personal item of information, particularly when no other utility company requires them to do so. They are angry, which is very understandable. Their anger is based on the fact that the word "personal" is pre-eminent in the title "personal public service number". Irish Water expects people to willingly supply details of their bank accounts and PPS numbers. Essentially, such numbers act almost as a PIN code for all sorts of private information. Irish Water has claimed that it requires people's PPS numbers in order to decide what allowances they should be allocated. However, even a cursory glance at the data protection statements on PPS numbers on the company's website is enough to strike fear into any citizen.

I say the word "citizen" deliberately because Irish Water keeps on referring to us as customers. The website goes into detail about how personal public service numbers will be used, among other things, for marketing and credit checking purposes. What credit checking purposes are we talking about now and, just as important, into the future? The Irish Water website goes on to say that the company can transfer all information to third parties and "By submitting data to Irish Water, the Customer agrees to this transfer, storing or processing".

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