Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an t-Aire Stáit inniu chun an Bille tábhachtach seo a phlé. I welcome the Minister of State to the House. While the Bill is relatively short, it is none the less important as we are transposing EU directives into our own domestic legislation. The primary purpose of the Bill is to put an obligation on providers of publicly available electronic communications services to retain certain data.

Many of our telephone service providers would historically have retained data for up to six years for their own use. We imposed an obligation on those providers of a three-year retention under the 1983 Act. That is available to the Garda but no such legislation underpins Internet data, and given the major use people make of the Internet and other electronic communications, it is important such an area would be regulated. It can assist the various State investigative bodies that are charged with ensuring compliance with the law in this country. We are reducing the three-year requirement under the 1983 Act to two years under this Bill. The Garda Síochána is satisfied with that change.

Most of our focus will probably be directed at Internet data. There is a provision under the EU directive to work within the parameters of retention for a period between six months and two years. We have selected 12 months as the optimum period. I presume that is being done after close consultation with the Garda, but I will come back to this point later.

A disclosure request by the Garda when conducting an investigation can only be made under the provisions of the Bill where a prison sentence of five years would apply to the offence in question. I think there are five specified offences in the Schedule, and this recognises that there is an impingement on the privacy of individuals when we give powers to State bodies to use data which are personal to the individual citizen.

Senator Bacik mentioned that there is no offence for the abuse of process in this instance. Can the Minister of State clarify this? If there is such an omission in the Bill, it should be examined because we are moving from the telephony era to the Internet era. I believe that abuse of process in this area should be a serious offence. If we look at the codes of practice that companies have for dealing with the abuse of electronic information by employees, we find that it is a sackable offence in most instances. It is viewed as being serious. I would not like to think we do not have penalties commensurate with the level of abuse and which should be imposed on anybody who failed to meet the standard we expect of them.

It is right that the Data Protection Commissioner and people involved in human rights organisations would take an interest in the detail of the Bill. I noted that interest and it surprised me to an extent, especially given the manner in which serious crime is so well organised and the difficulties encountered by the authorities charged with tackling gang related activities. There are constraints on the authorities and some of those are for good reason, but if data retention is only concerned with the who, where and when of communication and the Garda cannot request information about the content of a phone call or Internet message, then I would query the wisdom of such a policy. If we are going down this road, the purpose should be to bring people to account who are guilty of serious offences. Restricting it in this way would raise questions about the benefit we would get from this.

I also have questions about the offences under the authority of the Revenue Commissioners. The Data Protection Commissioner has also raised queries about this. Can the Minister of State tell the House if all the offences mentioned in the Bill are offences that would carry a prison sentence of five years or more? Some of them appear to be offences that should not be included in the provisions of this Bill for pursuit by the Revenue Commissioners.