Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My concern is with regard to the only exemption to a specified body disclosing a person's public service identity information to another specified body. The intention of the amendment is to expand the grounds not to be considered appropriate for the sharing of somebody's personal information with a specified body. Avoiding the financial and administrative burdens that would otherwise be imposed on a second public body or another person where the amount is to be collected is mentioned. I recognise the Government has tabled its own amendment in this regard. Legal concern has been expressed at the highest European courts about the invoking of financial and administrative ease as the grounds on which personal information may be shared between specified bodies. The Government has tabled amendments with regard to avoiding a financial or administrative burden on the person. I recognise significant progress has been made in this regard because the Government now recognises that a financial or administrative burden for a body is not an adequate legal basis on which to share information and has reframed it to deal with financial and administrative burdens on a person. This is positive and I will support the Government's amendment in this regard.

I intend to press amendment No. 20. To make this meaningful, people need the option of being able to state they do not regard it as a financial or administrative burden to provide the information twice, and that it would be their preference to give each of the specified bodies the information separately rather than have them share it.

We cannot have an assumption that the preference of people is that their data would be shared between bodies without their explicit consent. They have to be asked. I do not go so far as stating they should be asked, which is what I would like to have included. I have tried to be reasonable and accommodate reasons of efficiency. I am simply looking to insert an opt-out so people can state they have given information to a particular public body and would prefer other public bodies that wish to use the information to ask them directly rather than having the information shared. It comes back to financial and administrative burdens. Some people will say it is convenient and wonderful that their data is shared between many bodies, that they do not have to think about it and that they have to be asked for it only once, but others will state that for them it is not burdensome to decide in each instance to give their information directly to a number of different bodies for the reasons and purposes they set out and to have control of their data. For some people it is more financially and administratively burdensome to trace retrospectively where their information has been exchanged. Some people will make a point of trying to track it.

I accept there is progress. I recognise the default measure will be an assumption that people are happy to have their information shared but I ask for a mechanism, and perhaps it is something that may be considered in the Dáil, to allow those probably quite few individuals who do not want their information shared without their knowledge to have the option to state they would prefer to engage directly with each body. It is a very small point but it is important for the dignity and element of choice of the person. This is with regard to amendment No. 20, which is the only amendment of particular concern to me in this grouping.

Amendment No. 35 makes the same point. In amendments Nos. 20 and 37 I have given two approaches and it would be good if the Minister of State was able to indicate whether one of the approaches is more amenable to him. In amendment No. 20, I suggest a person could give instruction that he or she does not regard collection of personal data directly by a public body as burdensome. In amendment No. 37, I suggest a mechanism might be provided to allow a person to whom a service is about to be delivered to give instruction that he or she does not regard collection of personal data directly as a burden. These are the two approaches and I am very happy to press only one.The Minister may have a suggestion as to how to address the issue but he will understand the point I am trying to get to.