Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Daly for raising the subject. It is a constructive suggestion and like all suggestions it has obstacles that sometimes may not be anticipated but it has merit. I will outline the difficulties but this has enough merit to justify me looking at those obstacles and seeing if they could and should be removed.

Driving licences in Ireland are in a format set at European Union level. They include information marked in the form of numerical codes. Some codes are standard across the EU, but some may be created by member states. Ireland has taken advantage of this facility to allow applicants for a driving licence to opt to have a code 115, which indicates they are willing to be considered as organ donors. I have not heard the suggestion before that the information in question might be shared with the HSE. That does not mean it is a bad suggestion and the definition of a conservative is someone who will not do something for the first time. It is not a reason this should not be done.

It would raise a number of important questions. First, and as the Senator mentioned, there is the matter of data sharing. The Senator is aware that new EU rules on data protection are due to come into effect from 25 May. Among other protections, we would need the permission of the data subjects to share their data. In this case, the difficulty is that people have been asked to indicate, as part of their driver licence application, if they wish to be organ donors. If they do, a code 115 is marked on their licence. However, they have not been asked if they are willing to have this data shared with a third party such as the HSE, and it would not be possible to share it without their consent. It may be possible to add a question to the application form as to whether people consent to the sharing of the information. As a licence is valid for ten years, it would take a decade to work through the system until everyone willing to share their data was covered.

There is also a risk to be considered, which is that people might be more reluctant to volunteer to have a code 115 if they had concerns about their data being shared. I do not know if it is true but it must be considered. What data would be shared? Are we talking about the names and home addresses of people who chosen to have a code 115? Would it include their licence details? We need to think this through. Given the general sensitivity to data security and data sharing, there must be a real concern that the number of people opting for a code 115 might drop. We also need to consider what the societal gain might be in this case. Consequently, there is a significant body of work to be done before this can be answered. Is it intended that the HSE could look up lists of potential organ donors, for example, where a patient died and the HSE wanted to know quickly if the patient had signed on to be a donor? If this is what is intended, there may well be benefits, but I certainly want to hear the HSE’s views on this, as well as those of the Road Safety Authority, RSA, before taking any action.

Taking all of this together, there may be a case for examining whether this should be done but before getting to the stage of asking the RSA to devote any resources to it I would need to be convinced that there was at least some chance of this proposal having advantages for the public. On that matter I would particularly require the initial views of the HSE. I will ask the HSE to give me those views and see if I can progress this proposal in a constructive way. It makes much initial sense and if we can get over the data protection issues, I am prepared to pursue it in response to the Senator's comments.