Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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550. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his views on introducing legislation to require all mobile phones to be registered with the name, address and proof of identity of the phone user in order to tackle potential illegal activity through the use of untraceable and unregistered phones; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44928/14]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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Available evidence to date shows that introducing measures such as outlined in the Deputy's question may not have any material impact in terms of preventing illegal activity.

A proposal to register all customers of mobile phone services was considered previously by my Department. It was concluded at the time that such a proposal would be unlikely to solve the illegal and inappropriate use of mobile phones by persons determined to use the technology for illegal activity. There is also a risk that such measures could lead to the emergence in a black market for fraudulently registered or stolen SIM cards.

Furthermore, there are significant data protection issues associated with such a proposal. The routine collection and retention of an individual's personal information could be contrary to current Data Protection legislation.

For those reasons I am not currently considering any such legislative measures.