RETAINING DIFFERENT kinds of electronic data for one and two years is necessary for law enforcement, Minister of State for Justice Peter Power told the Oireachtas committee on justice, defence and women’s rights yesterday.

He was responding to a Labour Party proposal to amend the Communications (Retention of Data) Bill 2009. Seán Sherlock TD proposed reducing the time for which data can be retained to one year for telephony and six months for internet data. In the Bill, the periods are two years and one year respectively.

The Bill will give effect to the EU data retention directive and it requires telecommunications companies and internet service providers to retain data about communications (though not the content of the communications). The directive allows for retention of the data for any period between six months and two years.

Mr Sherlock said that the longer retention periods would impose a cost on the businesses providing telephone and internet services and would thus reduce Ireland’s competitiveness in e-commerce.