Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State said on Committee Stage that he could not accept our amendments. Obviously, he is trying to reverse the amendments we secured at the time relating to the public services card and the public service identity data set. The Minister of State said the measures would be in direct conflict with existing legislation. He referred to the Social Welfare Consolidation Act. This Bill interacts in a significant way with the Social Welfare Consolidation Act, as we said on Committee Stage. Indeed, it amends that Act.

Section 247C of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act, as amended, states that the Minister may require a person receiving a benefit to satisfy the Minister as to his or her identity. That is completely acceptable and understandable and we have no problem with that. Section 247C(3) of that Act specifies the manner in which the Minister may be satisfied. Essentially, it describes the standard authentication framework environment level 2 verification process for registering a person's identity. That is fine. The problem is that the aim of the public services card and the SAFE 2 process is not limited to verification. The aim is also to coerce consent to data sharing. It is to enable the creation of a database of citizens' data.

Section 262(6) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act states that where a specified body has a transaction with a person, the Minister may share the person's public service identity with the specified body to the extent necessary for authentication by the specified body of the person's public service identity. That section states that a person's public service identity may be used by a specified body in performing its public functions. The use of "may" is significant. It permits data sharing but it does not require or demand it. Data sharing is not an inevitable consequence of the verification of a person's identity.

Section 247C(1) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act makes clear that the purpose of the verification process described is to satisfy the Minister as to the person's identity. Once the person's identity has been verified and the Minister is satisfied as to the person's identity, there is no legal basis for further processing of that person's data unless the body has obtained the person's consent.

The point of our amendments relating to the public services card is to provide a solution to the practice of coercing consent in order that a person does not have to register for a public services card or agree to the processing of his or her public services identity dataset to access basic services. There has to be an alternative. We do not have a problem with the SAFE 2 verification process per se. Verification of identity is essential, but the State and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection have created a bizarre situation whereby verification of identity leads inevitably to a large-scale sharing of personal data.

The Minister of State said this Bill makes no reference to the public services card and that it is not relevant to the public services card. However, the public services card is a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform project. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is doing the heavy lifting for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It is doing the dirty work of coercing consent. It can do so effectively because the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is the only source of income for significant numbers of people. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has issued letters warning that failure to comply might result in a person's income being cut off. People were denied payments because they refused large-scale sharing of their data. The State is targeting vulnerable citizens via the welfare system. As I said on Committee Stage, privacy is a human right and we cannot be selective in how we observe human rights. We should not tolerate State coercion and we should not tolerate the State acting illegally under EU law.

There is nothing in our amendments to contradict or make unworkable the Social Welfare Consolidation Act. At the Committee of Public Accounts meeting on 29 November there was a significant discussion between Deputy Burke and the Secretary General of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Mr. John McKeon. Deputy Burke questioned Mr. McKeon about the decision of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to stop making the public services card mandatory for driver theory test applications. Mr. McKeon repeated several times that it is a matter for each Department to make a judgment as to how it wishes to use the card. Mr. McKeon stated that his Department uses the public services card for the Department's own purposes. He made the point that whether another Department wants to use the public services card is up to that Department, although he failed to acknowledge that his Department is guilty of illegally coercing consent to data sharing by withholding social welfare payments to those who refuse to register for the card. Deputy Burke asked Mr. McKeon if it was a regressive step by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. Crucially, Mr. McKeon replied by saying that the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport would have to reach its own conclusions. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport clearly realised that it had no legal basis to coerce consent to data sharing. The Road Safety Authority, which runs the driving test, was told by the Department to cancel the plan after announcing it as a requirement. In response to my parliamentary question earlier this year, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport said that it had spent €2 million on the information technology element of the project and a further €30,000 or €40,000 on advertising. It sounds like a waste of money since the Government has been repeatedly warned about the lack of a legal basis for denying services to people who refused to register for a public services card due to concerns about the sharing of their data.

This change of heart with regard to the public services card shows that each Department or service provider can use its discretion in respect of requirements for the card. Mr. John McKeon made that clear at the Committee of Public Accounts meeting. This is exactly what the Minister of State said to me on Committee Stage.

We are not prescribing what an individual service provider must or must not use. I do not understand the logic of the Minister of State when he says that our amendments would mean that the Social Welfare Consolidation Act would have to be unwound and that the provisions would be unworkable. I do not believe that is true and I am unsure whether the Minister of State does. Oddly enough, the Minister of State is making clear that our point is valid.

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