Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that the Tánaiste may not have been prepared for this but I would appreciate it if he would check the records. I accept that many people made contact offering help and business opportunities. It is important to know where that contact came from, given the background of the company and how it came to pass that such an important order was placed with a company that ostensibly had no expertise in this area whatsoever. I would appreciate it if the Tánaiste would check for contacts, either with himself, with the then Minister or with anybody else, and if he would check how the contract came to be awarded or the order to be placed.

I also want to raise those issues again which have been raised with me by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL. There are serious data protection concerns about the testing project in Roscommon and the development of the health passport app. Both of those projects involved an element of health research that was retaining personal information and it would appear that there is not compliance in relation to data protection. I ask again that the Tánaiste would raise this with the Minister for Health to provide an assurance that everything is above board in this respect. It is hard to know how a company with that kind of background can come in, get projects like this, be approved and be allowed to operate, using this new app that it has developed with question marks over the security and data protection issues associated with it.

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