Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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603. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of successful matches the host mailing service in her Department has made in the time since the revised protocol was put into place in October 2013 between pension scheme providers and beneficiaries; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7714/19]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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604. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if enquiries from persons in relation to tracing unclaimed pension entitlements comes under her aegis; if such enquiries are responded to by her Department; if the host mailing service and associated efforts are limited solely to enquiries from pension scheme administrators; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7715/19]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 603 and 604 together.

The Department had an arrangement with pension companies where a person's pension had matured and the company had been unable to contact the person.

The pension company provided a letter with the person's details and where the Department held a more recent address, the letter was forwarded on to the person at that address. This enabled the person concerned to contact the pension administrator if they so wished. The Department did not provide any information to the pension administrator.

As persons contacted in this way would have made contact with the pension companies themselves and not with the Department, it is not possible to state how many persons benefited from this.

The Department has suspended the provision of this service pending the receipt of legal advice on the application of the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation. I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.