Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein)
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1109. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the level of personal information sharing and-or exchange between her Department and An Garda Síochána. [9012/20]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Data Protection legislation (section 41(b) of the Data Protection Act 2018) permits the disclosure of information to members of An Garda Síochána when they are preventing, detecting or investigating offences or prosecuting criminal offences.  In addition, Section 8 of the Immigration Act 2003 permits the exchange of information with An Garda Síochána in respect of non-Irish nationals.  There are also circumstances in which sections of the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 still apply and under which An Garda Síochána can make requests.  

The Department keeps a central database of all requests from An Garda Síochána.  There are procedures for dealing with the requests and recording them on the central database.  These procedures include the requirements that:

- the request must be from a Garda Sergeant (or higher rank),

- the request must either be on the Garda Station’s headed notepaper or in the case of email have these details included in the body of the email,

- the request must give the legislative basis for the request,

- the request must also confirm that the information is required in relation to the investigation of an offence.

The Data Protection Unit of the Department has responsibility for the central database which holds the requests.  I am advised that 3,311 requests have been recorded on the central database in 2020 to date.