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

I will now report on amendments Nos. 8 and 9. Section 10 provides for access to the national individual health identifier register by the Minister and specified persons, including health professionals, their employees and agents, health organisations, their employees and agents, and other bodies. The potential number of specified persons is, therefore, large. As the section stood after the Bill was passed by the Seanad, access was to all of the information on the register, that is, the identifier and identifying particulars, with no provision to allow the Minister to control or restrict access by specified persons to a lesser amount of information. It was appropriate to include such a provision, as not every specified person would need access to all of an individual's information on the register. While the PPS number, for example, should be a searchable element in establishing an individual's identifier, it should not be something that is universally available to any specified person accessing the register. Accordingly, the purpose of amendment No. 8 was to allow for the making of regulations to limit access to the information on the register. Such regulations will require consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner and a public interest dimension.

Amendment No. 9 to section 11 is similar in principle to the amendment to section 10. Among other matters, section 11 deals with the processing by the Minister and specified persons of the identifier and the related identifying particulars in the register and the disclosure by them of such information to another specified person for relevant purposes or to an authorised disclosee for secondary purposes. Amendment No. 9 has allowed for the possibility, through regulations, of restricting the processing or further processing by specified persons of certain information on the register and the disclosure by them of such information to other specified persons for a relevant purpose. The notion of restricted disclosure is additionally strengthened by amendment No. 9 as regards disclosure by specified persons to authorised disclosees by providing for the possibility that it may also extend to restricting the use of such information in terms of certain secondary purposes. Regulations made pursuant to amendment No. 9 will involve consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner and have regard to the public interest.