Fury as council tenants data is handed over to irish water

Some of Westmeath County Council’s tenants are seeking legal advice, after it emerged yesterday that the local authority has released data on its tenants to Irish Water.

The Westmeath Examiner understands that councillors were briefed yesterday (Tuesday) morning to the effect that the data transfer took place on Monday, in order to meet a deadline imposed by the controversial utility.

Had the deadline passed without the details being made available, Westmeath County Council would have been liable for water charges on whatever properties they own.

That Irish Water was in search of tenants’ data was flagged at a council meeting in November, when chief executive Pat Gallagher made it clear that the council were “statutorily bound” to hand over the information to Irish Water.

A number of councillors, including Cllr Clarke, Labour’s Cllr Mick Dollard and Fianna Fáil’s Cllr Ken Glynn, asked that when the time came for data to be handed over, the executive inform them and tenants in advance, “as a matter of courtesy”.

For this reason, councillors like Sinn Féin’s Paul Hogan were stunned to hear about the data transfer after it had already happened, and the Athlone man took to social media to inform his constituents.

“I’m disgusted,” Cllr Hogan said on Facebook yesterday. “They [the council] did this without informing our tenants or informing the elected representatives.”

The council executive’s move comes as Cllr Hogan’s party colleague, Mullingar’s Sorca Clarke, prepared a motion for next Monday’s meeting of the local authority, calling on the executive not to transfer their tenants’ data to the utility.

Cllr Clarke told the Westmeath Examiner today that despite provisions made in the Water Services Bill, such data transfers are gross breaches of privacy which make a mockery of the Data Protection Act, the UN Convention on Data Protection and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“I have spoken to a number of council tenants, and they are deeply annoyed and extremely concerned,” Cllr Clarke said. “Some of them are seeking independent legal advice.

“There’s a wider issue here, and that’s discrimination. The council doesn’t just hold data about tenants. They hold data belonging to councillors, staff, library card owners, people who tax their vehicles and so on.

“So what they’ve done here is to highlight one particular section of people alone, and hand their data over – which is discrimination.”

Cllr Clarke said that the whole episode underlines the “underhanded nature” of Irish Water, who have tried to “bully landlords, and only last week tried to bully An Post” – a reference to Environment Minister Alan Kelly’s recent order permitting the utility to verify householders’ addresses with the postal company.

Westmeath County Council, when contacted by this newspaper, declined to comment “at this time”.