Irish Water’s PPS demand was pushed through after two-minute debate at Dáil subcommittee

I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record on the theme of how dysfunctional our parliament has become but I feel compelled this week to take another spin on the turntable.

Bear with me as I follow up on last week’s look at how legislation relating to Irish Water was rushed and guillotined with a recap on how the utility company was given the power to demand PPS numbers from householders.

This did not happen, as you might have expected, in any of the pieces of legislations dealing with Irish Water itself.

It happened as a little amendment contained in the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2014, which is a very strange place for an amendment dealing with either Irish Water or PPS numbers.

This Act describes itself as a piece of legislation to give further effect to a European directive dealing with the need for equal treatment between self- employed men and women in relation to social welfare and pensions.

Explanatory m

emorandum As originally published, the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2014 contained no provisions relating to Irish Water or PPS numbers. The e

xplanatory memorandum, which, as the name suggests, was supposed to explain the intentions of the Bill, did not make any reference to Irish Water. In the second-stage Dáil debate, which was supposed to deal with the general principles and purpose of the legislation, there was also no mention of power being given to Irish Water to require PPS numbers.

The Bill was sent to a Dáil subcommittee for committee-stage debate and in a single afternoon on Wednesday, July 7th, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton and Opposition spokespeople discussed various amendments. The focus of this debate was on the general changes to the pensions and the social welfare system required by the EU directive.

Then, about 10 minutes before the committee-stage debate finished, the Minister moved a four-line amendment, the effect of which was to add Irish Water to the list of “specified bodies” that a previous law had enabled to seek and hold PPS numbers.

At the time the amendment was moved there was probably only a handful of deputies in the committee room. Deputies would have been notified of the intended amendment a day or two beforehand but the committee largely failed to appreciate its significance. The debate about the amendment lasted all of two minutes.

The Minister advanced in one sentence the reasons for this legislative change.

“This is to provide for the authorised use of personal public service numbers, PPSNs, for the purpose of carrying out transactions in respect of Irish Water,” she said.

The only response was from the Sinn Féin spokesman, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, who said: “I am opposed to the change and will oppose it on report stage.”

The Minister did not feel it necessary to offer any further explanation and the amendment was agreed.

There was then no discussion of PPS numbers or Irish Water at the report and final stages of the legislation in the Dáil.

So fleeting was the consideration of the issue that, even after the legislation had passed, most Dáil deputies did not seem to appreciate what had happened. When Irish Water started making demands for PPS numbers two months later, several TDs, including Fine Gael backbencher Martin Heydon, who, like his colleagues, had voted for the Act in its final form, used the parliamentary questions procedure to ask the Minister how Irish Water had got the power to require PPS numbers.

Truncated debate

As with so many legislative provisions the consideration of the issue in the Seanad was better than in the Lower House but even in the Seanad the debate was so truncated and focused on the principal aspects of the Bill that the Irish Water and PPS number provision went largely unnoticed. Fianna Fáil spokesman Senator Pascal Mooney pointed out that many people would see it as inappropriate that a commercial entity such as Irish Water should have access to PPS numbers and he sought assurances that this information would be used only for the reason specified in the Act and not, for example, to sell it to a third party.

At the Seanad committee stage Ms Burton offered the same assurance she is still offering and said the information was needed to confirm entitlement to water allowances, especially for children. Again, these exchanges lasted only minutes.

The Independent Senator Feargal Quinn will soon introduce a piece of legislation to reverse the amendment belatedly introduced by Ms Burton into the 2014 Act. He is about to do so in circumstances where a growing number of people question whether it is necessary for Irish Water to have PPS numbers.

The fact that the Government no longer has a majority in the Seanad raises the possibility that Sen Quinn’s legislation will get some traction. If nothing else it will give the Oireachtas a meaningful opportunity to debate s whether Irish Water should have PPS numbers and, if it should, what protections should be put in place.