Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Mark Daly for raising this matter. In fairness, he has been pressing the issue of organ donation for a number of years and has been very passionate about it. I commend him on his work in respect of the matter. As we know, organ donation saves many lives and is critically important. Again, I convey the apologies of the Minister who cannot be here.

As the Senator stated, in replies given to him last May, the issue of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and data protection in general were raised as being an impediment to progress being seen on this matter. One of the issues about which the Minister is concerned is that we need to be very careful about this. One of the suggestions is that it may be possible to add a question to the application form asking whether people consent to the sharing of the information. As a licence is valid for ten years, it would then take a decade to work through the system to cover everyone in this regard. As for the HSE and the Department of Health, there is a significant body of work to be done before it can be established whether the statutory instrument to which the Senator referred could be effective. If it is 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 up to be a donor, there could well be benefits. However, the Minister still needs to hear the HSE's views on this, as well as those of the Road Safety Authority, RSA, before he can take action. There are at present many pressing issues within the Department, particularly in the context of Brexit. As acknowledged since last May, this matter has not received the priority or attention it needs in view of the other constraints currently affecting the Department. However, I will go back to the Minister on the specific question of the statutory instrument to which the Senator referred - perhaps he could give me a copy of it - and ask him to look particularly at the legal issues surrounding it.If it is the case that a simple statutory instrument, if signed, would address this issue, that would be a major step forward. I will commit to see if we can make progress on it. None of us knows who will be affected by this or whose life could be saved in the short term as a result. This is deserving of further scrutiny and attention, and if a quick solution can be found here, that would be major progress.