According to an article in the Irish Times of 26 May, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner Mr Joe Meade has twice threatened to begin High Court proceedings against the Government for using an "invalid" Ministerial Direction to unconstitutionally store citizens' phone, fax and mobile call data for 3 years.

As reported in EDRI-gram nr. 3, in April 2002 the Minister for Public Enterprise issued directions to telecommunication operators to keep detailed, non-anonymous traffic data for a three-year period. When Meade revealed this during a conference on data retention in February, he stated that government was also preparing mandatory data-retention for internet providers.

The situation was even worse when Meade first obliged providers and telco's to register their databases with the Office for Data Protection. In January 2001 the Commissioner found out that companies had been keeping these data for 6 years. Following EU privacy-guidelines he pressed for a maximum retention period of 6 months. The Irish government obviously wasn't pleased and issued the secret direction in response.

The Irish Times obtained correspondence of the Commissioner under the Freedom of Information Act. In his letters, Meade said the Direction was "in breach of Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution", lacked "the character of law", and was "in breach of the principles of (European) Community law". He also threatened proceedings because he believed the Government had failed to act with the haste it initially promised, to replace the secret Direction with primary legislation.

'Court threat for State over data privacy' by Karlin Lillington (26.05.2003)
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/2003/05/26.html#a2327