By November 19 last year, Irish Water had received hundreds of thousands of PPS numbers, as originally required. Then, due to popular pressure, the company said it would no longer require to have people’s PPS numbers, and that those already in its possession would be destroyed.
Irish Water Managing Director, John Tierney, said at the time that all PPS numbers would be deleted by the end of January, and that a protocol to remove the numbers had been agreed with the Data Protection Commissioner.
However, as of March, it remains unclear whether the PPS removal process has been completed.
When quizzed how much has been spent on deleting the numbers, Irish Water said, “The final costs of disposal have yet to be determined…when the disposal of all PPSN information has been completed the full cost of carrying out this process will be made available by Irish Water.”