Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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574. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if personal public service numbers form part of the asset base of Irish Water. [40189/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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With effect from 1 January 2014, Irish Water is responsible for public water services. The Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013 provides that Irish Water shall collect charges from its customers in receipt of water services provided by it. The collection of Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers allows Irish Water to confirm and validate the entitlement to allowances for each customer. This information will not be shared with any organisation other than the Department of Social Protection and it will be used only for the purpose of verification to ensure that each household receives the allowances it is entitled to, be it the free allowance per household or any additional allowance for children in receipt of Child Benefit at that address.

The Data Protection Commissioner has worked closely with Irish Water to agree the process for the capture, storage and usage of customer data and Irish Water has confirmed that it will not sell any customer data.

Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public representatives. They may be contacted via email at oireachtasmembers@water.ieor by telephone on 1890 278 278.