Ruling cuts data retention to two years

THE length of time telephone companies will have to retain data on calls will be reduced from three years to two as the Government prepares to bring its legislation into line with EU regulations.

Yesterday, the state lost its case in the European Court of Justice challenging the way the data retention directive was agreed in 2006.

The European Commission has given notice that legal action will be taken if Ireland does not comply.

In a statement the Department of Justice said work on bringing the directive into Irish law was well advanced.

The law requires telecom service providers to retain all records on phone calls, text messages and emails for between six months and two years to help security forces and police when investigating serious crime and terrorism.

The information relates to times, dates and location of calls, texts and emails and not to their content.

Internet service providers will have to retain certain data for 12 months, in line with EU law, the Department of Justice confirmed.

In 2006, the then Justice Minister Michael McDowell insisted the directive should have been agreed by unanimity between the EU member states as a decision relating to co-operation by police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters.

But the European Commission and most other countries agreed that it could be done as an internal market law that saw the European Parliament also having a say in it.

Ireland, France, Sweden and Britain proposed having EU legislation on retaining data in April 2004 and the commission was asked to draw it up. But Ireland, supported by Slovakia, voted against the directive and asked the Court of Justice to annul it on the grounds that it had been agreed under the wrong legal mechanism.

The court ruled that data retention costs service providers a lot of money, so the rules needed to be roughly the same throughout the EU, otherwise the costs could be much greater in some countries and so distort competition and the internal market.

The court also found that the directive relates only to the activities of service providers and does not govern access and use by the police or judicial authorities of member states.