mr president i would like to thank the commissioner for his reply and i will be very happy to sit down with him and talk through all the details
i shall come back briefly to purpose because there are many misunderstandings about what can and cannot be done with pnr data
pnr data are already available now today without an eu pnr scheme simply with a warrant and due cause
but the need for further unlimited powers has not been proven
so i do not dispute the usefulness of pnr data in themselves i dispute the usefulness of this mass collection and automated analysis
i am not the only one who is of this view i am in good company
the data protection authorities have the same view but they are being ignored
the air carriers are telling us the same
security experts from airport security tell us the same and i will give you a quote from a report that was commissioned by the department of homeland security i will be very happy to give it to you
it says automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other known methodology is not feasible as an objective
i did not make this up
these are security experts commissioned by the department of homeland security
there is evidence for the usefulness as you said commissioner but usefulness in combating drugs trafficking or illegal immigration or other purposes
this may surprise you but i am not even opposed in principle to using pnr data for those purposes
but we must be very precise in defining the purposes so as to ensure proportionality and to ensure adequate legal safeguards
i would like to conclude on a very personal note
i am very unhappy about the way that we have been arguing about pnr for five years now and the council and the commission just charge ahead like a runaway train
i would like to say to my fellow irish eu citizens that if you share my desire to end this kind of undemocratic and untransparent decision-making then please say yes to the new eu treaty
