Thread by @Tupp_Ed

If I might seek to provide some light relief from #GE17 snow clouds,

I FOI’d the Ministerial Agreement On Data Processing underpinning the #PSC and.. um, it was never signed by or on behalf of the Ministers.

And it also may have lapsed in Feb 2016.

mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2017/11/27/dat…

This is quite significant. Irish Water relied on their Schedule 5 status to collect PPS Numbers. (the same basis @welfare_ie used to justify DPER Processing data on their behalf.)

Then they had to destroy all those records when they couldn’t produce a Ministerial Agreement.

The 2014 Agreement starts off as an Agreement between Ministers (as you might expect).

But then, only two pages later, somebody seems to have forgotten that fact. Because, instead of the Agreement being concluded between the Ministers, it is signed by Civil Service officials,
“For and On Behalf Of The Department of Social Protection” & “For and On Behalf Of” DPER.

The signatories have (and, to be clear, claim) no power to bind the Ministers. The result is that no agreement has been concluded by the Ministers.

How this happened, or why it was done, I can’t imagine.

But one thing is clear. The Agreement underpinning the SCV database, on which the €60m+ #PSC project is built, is kinda wonky.

Oh, and there’s one more thing. I asked for the Data Processing Agreement underpinning this data transfer.

I was surprised to find it has a kind of a self destruct system. Unless something has been done, it lapsed in Feb 2016.

This all seems particularly relevant today, as the Social Welfare Bill is before the Dáil.

The bill includes a section intended to widen the use of the PSC as an ID card.

The Gov proposes removing the offence of having a PSC produced to you, when you’re not a named State body.