Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is wonderful. One always knows that it is time to go when I get on my feet. I usually sit here for hours waiting for people to finish their contribution so that I get a miserable few seconds to say something.

The Minister is welcome. I think this is the first time I have addressed him in this House and I shall try to make it as painless as possible. The Bill he has brought forward is to ensure the public interest is served in regard to undertaking a legitimate postcode activity so that the processing of any personal data, in postcodes, enables databases to be in compliance with data protection. There are many serious concerns to be expressed here, and not just about the Bill but about the entire Eircode project. Eircode is a flawed concept and may end up, at best, unusable or unused by Irish citizens and, at worst, cost lives in cases where emergency services cannot locate a person due to the random selection of four characters of the seven character code.

I shall begin today with the issue of data protection. Since the project was first moved there have been serious data protection concerns. We are aware that the Data Protection Commissioner, in 2004, advised the Department not to use unique identifying codes for privacy reasons. One of the main stakeholders, Digital Rights Ireland, is equally concerned. It stated:

We want to state clearly that we are not at all ‘satisfied’ with the postcode that has been designed or the implementation proposals. Our view is that you are taking a dangerous and needless step into the unknown by going ahead with the code as currently proposed. We gave details of an immediate privacy problem that will present itself immediately after launch. We warned that the mitigating measures that the Department is proposing would not really help, and might even be a distraction from other critical project issues. We warned that the legal protections of the data protection regime would be largely unenforceable in the context of global Internet advertising networks.

The organisation also mentioned several other things but continued:

That said, we are puzzled as to how the firmly conveyed views of the Data Protection Commissioner about individual house coding were put to one side when the requirements for the code were totally revised without consultation in 2010.

My colleague, Senator Daly, referred to the secrecy surrounding Eircode and it seems we have another Irish Water situation. There is a 700 page contract that nobody can see. The contract is not available for access through FOI and several organisations have requested it under freedom of information. What does that say about the openness and transparency we were promised when this Government was elected?

The Minister mentioned the ambulance service, in particular. From what I can gather, the emergency services, and in particular their members who are in trade unions that serve those services, are not at all impressed by the code and have some serious concerns about same.

The online industry will not use the codes because they are not compulsory. They have deemed them to have no use whatsoever and claim they will distract more than anything else.

I understand that the Garmin and TomTom companies have said they will not use the postcodes in their GPS systems. That is a failure. Any Member who has been in the States, in continental Europe or in the UK will know that one simply types in a postcode and one is brought directly to the house. If Garmin and TomTom are not impressed then where does that leave us?

Yesterday, a number of Senators - I certainly did - received communications from the Global Addresses Data Association. The title of the document the association sent to me was "When is a postcode not a postcode?" and it rubbished the entire postcode system that has been put forward.

Today, Senator Quinn mentioned that we might use the Internet and email. My God, where are we going to use email? I watched a programme on television a few nights ago and it showed that there is simply no broadband in half of this country. That means there is no access to email, to Internet services and our businesses are struggling.

The bottom line is that I shall bring forward some amendments to this Bill because I believe the Bill is flawed. I believe the overall project is seriously flawed. When one considers the randomised nature of the postcodes that are used it is a total nonsense. I also believe the system will put lives at risk rather than make ambulance services find addresses easily, particularly if we have the sort of resistance we have right now.

The Acting Chairman has been very good to allow me a few moments of his time and I am extremely grateful. When the Independent Group is formed next week, with me as its leader and only member, I will get plenty of time.