Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Group 2 comprises amendments Nos. 3 to 5, inclusive, which relate to section 7 of the Bill. The Seanad will recall that in regard to a number of the amendments made on the floor of the House, I said there may be a need to make technical amendments to ensure the wording is completely sound from a legal point of view. Most of the amendments we are considering today fall into this category; they are technical in nature and the changes proposed are being made on foot of the advice that I and the Department have received from the Office of the Attorney General.

In respect of this group of amendments, the Seanad will recall that it approved two amendments to section 7 that were intended to make explicit that if any part of the public service identity were to contain special category data, it could not be shared under this legislation. In fact, that was a fundamental part of the discussion we had. An issue arises with these amendments in that they only apply to subsection (2) of that section of the Bill and it is not clear if they apply to any other subsections, even though subsection (3) also refers to public service identity. Therefore, to avoid any doubt, the Dáil has agreed to delete the original two amendments and instead create a specific definition of "public service identity" in section 7(5) that explicitly excludes special category data which had applied to the entirety of this section of the Bill.