Health Information Bill 2024: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-03 ============================================================ Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire Our health system needs a robust and proven identifier so that health information can effectively and reliably be associated with the right individual. That is essential for care and treatment, as well as for patient safety. The Bill aims to enhance patient safety through a stronger identification process, including best practice use of PPSNs and eircodes to uniquely identify patients. Amendments tabled on Committee Stage in the Dáil provided for the insertion of a new section 12, mandating a health services provider to record the PPSNs of his or her patients and associate them with any record that health services provider makes in relation to the provision of health services to patients. It also empowers a health services provider to request a patient to provide his or her PPSN, empowers the HSE to use a PPSN to identify a patient in order to identify and link the patient's health information to his or her electronic record, and mandates a relevant person, as defined in the Bill, to provide a PPSN of a patient where the number is requested by the HSE and the relevant person has the PPSN in his or her possession. Importantly, a patient shall not be refused a health service solely because he or she has not been issued with a PPSN or is not in a position to provide his or her PPSN. The amendment allows for further consultation with the Department of Social Protection and provides clarification for the benefit, in particular, of a health services provider or relevant person that using or seeking a PPSN for the purposes set out in the Bill is not an offence under section 262(9) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-03/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-03