By Ralph Riegel

Copyright independent

The revelation – following an RTÉ Prime Time investigation – was called “chilling” by Labour leader Ivana Bacik.

Now, the Data Protection Commission acknowledged it was “extremely concerned” by the issue.

Mr Martin, speaking at Blackwater Community School in Lismore, Co Waterford, acknowledged that the matter did raise potential security concerns.

It emerged that phone data could even be tracked back to specific residential addresses.

These included health clinics, mental health facilities, military bases, prisons and even Government offices.

Such broker data has raised major security concerns about personal privacy – and even security at State offices.

The Taoiseach said both the Government and the Data Protection Commissioner will look at the revelations and consider whether legislative changes might be required.

“People should not share their location data,” Mr Martin warned.

“I think one of the issues is when people are downloading apps or they are in a hurry they do not read all the terms and conditions.”

“They tend to bypass those and they just want to get access to things. Basically, we do need to examine it because there are security implications…the tracking of movement, particularly people who may be vulnerable and exposed on security grounds.”

“Again, GDPR relates to – there could be an issue there legally in terms of the dividing line and the demarcation line in terms of GDPR and anonymous location identification.”

“The Data Protection Commissioner is looking at this but the Government will also examine this, discuss this and engage with the Commission and the industry, particularly in terms of the security dimension of this development.”

Mr Martin said the issue was being treated very seriously given the potential security implications.

“We are going to examine it and obviously we will look at all options in that regard.”

“In the modern era, data is one of the key economic drivers – the harnessing of data. People, when they are browsing or going through a newspaper article, they invariably are asked if they accept this…invariably they are anxious to read the article so you press whatever.”

“This is no surprise that data has been one of the dominant drivers of economic activity in the technology world for quite a long time.”

“I think governments generally have to always take a vigilant approach to protecting citizens and having a level playing field, a fair playing field, to protect the people.”

“That will always be our consideration and that applies to content as well to creating proper space for debate and discussion in society as well.”

The investigation looked at sample data from 64,000 phones in Ireland over a fortnight in April.

It was claimed that the data from the phones could be provided as a constantly updated feed with a 24 to 72 hours delay.

Concerns over the potential uses of the information was raised by security personnel given that it could be taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors either in Ireland or overseas.