Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In June 2017, the previous Government introduced an intended waiver from the flat-rate charges for waste collection. The Department of Social Protection and a range of agencies, including the National Waste Collection Permit Office, the Office of the Data Protection Commission and others, have been looking at how it could be implemented but they have run into difficulties. I am told there are issues due to the absence of a detailed list of persons in receipt of free incontinence wear from the HSE and GDPR, because it involves the gathering and sharing of information. There are other complications around that. We all know the introduction of GDPR legislation has had unintended consequences for the targeting, identifying or sharing of information about particular categories. We will not stop looking for this measure. I hear what Deputy O'Rourke and others are saying. There is broad agreement that we would like this to happen. In a similar area, we are trying to identify houses with high electricity use because they use a lot of medical devices in order to target them for particular supports. This cannot be impossible. We will use this debate to further things. I do not have an amendment before me and I will not amend the legislation but we will redouble efforts to implement that 2017 decision.

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