James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 5 were necessary owing to the renumbering caused by the substantive amendment No. 7, while amendment No. 6 was a drafting amendment to bring it into line with amendment No. 7. The objective of amendments Nos. 6 and 7 was to introduce an explicit public interest consideration where the Minister was making regulations on the following matters.

Those are adding to the list of authorised disclosees; adding to the list of specified persons; adding to the health-related purposes in secondary purposes for which the individual health identifier and the related identifying particulars can be processed; restricting access to the information in the individual health identifier register; and restricting the disclosure by specified persons of information in the register.

In determining the public interest, the Minister is required to have due regard to protecting the privacy of individuals and securing the effective achievement of one or more relevant purposes. Relevant purposes are the primary and secondary uses of the identifiers, as set out in the Bill. It should be further noted that, in all of the above cases, any such regulations made by the Minister will also be subject to consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner.