The Irish Government is supporting a controversial EU proposal requiring telecommunications providers to retain all data from faxes, emails and internet use, phone and mobile calls for up to seven years.

The proposal from the EU Telecommunications Council is designed to give additional power to law enforcement, but would overturn existing privacy guarantees that form the basis of EU data protection law.

The Republic, which is represented on the council by a Department of Public Enterprise representative, supported the proposal in a unanimous yes vote in late June. But allowing data retention and a stronger surveillance scheme directly contradicts the Department's own e-commerce directive, enacted last summer, which has sturdy privacy protections.

Almost no public or European parliamentary debate has taken place on crucial privacy issues, said Ms Patricia McKenna, Green Party MEP. "The Irish Government is agreeing to things on which there has been no debate," she said. "Our ministers aren't even present at EU meetings."

The Irish Times contacted the Department of Public Enterprise several times, but the Department did not offer a spokesperson to comment on the issue.

The proposal is strongly opposed by the Data Protection Commissioners Working Party, which sent a letter condemning the proposed changes to Sweden's acting European Council President Mr Goran Persson in June.

"Systematic and preventive storage of EU citizens' communications and related traffic data would undermine the fundamental rights to privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, liberty and presumption of innocence.

Could the information society still claim to be a democratic society under such circumstances?" the letter asked. The council's proposal has also caused consternation among EU business organisations already concerned about the existence of the highly secretive and powerful ECHELON surveillance system jointly operated by the US and Britain.

In May, an EU report confirmed the existence of ECHELON and warned European businesses to use encryption routinely to protect the privacy of their communications. The report - which many MEPs, including Ms McKenna, refused to support because they believed it was inadequate and toothless - found no evidence that the system had been used for industrial espionage.

"The whole emphasis in Europe seems to be on how to get access, rather than how to protect privacy," said Ms McKenna.

The proposal would violate European human rights guarantees, according to Mr Tony Bunyan, director of EU privacy advocate Statewatch. But he notes that it could take years for a court challenge to succeed, allowing surveillance to continue in the interim. He also said business groups believe the proposal would damage the development of e-commerce in Europe, because consumers would worry that all their transactions were under surveillance.

Businesses would also be concerned that "their e-mails and calls are being trawled", he said.

The Telecommunications Council proposal suggests a change to the new directive on data protection and telecommunications. The council had wanted an alteration to Article 15 of the directive, but has watered this proposal down, probably due to opposition from Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, which objected to the initial proposal.

Now, the council wants a non-binding "Recital" be inserted into the directive. This would let member-states decide whether to change their national laws to allow data to be retained for law enforcement purposes. For the proposal to be effective, all states would need to support a similar surveillance regime.

Under existing protections, data cannot be retained after its use for billing purposes except under strictly defined terms, and must be deleted or made anonymous. But the new proposal would allow data to be held for periods of 12 months to seven years in case law enforcement wants to search through it.

The new surveillance proposal was fronted by Britain and supported by the incoming Belgian and outgoing Swedish EU presidencies. In early September, the European Parliament will vote on the proposal.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Joe Meade, said the proposal would clearly go against existing data protection laws and raise privacy rights issues. But he would be required to support the implementation of any changes to the existing directives, he said.

Communication service providers - telecommunications companies and internet service providers - would likely be required to help foot the bill for the installation and operation of surveillance equipment on their own networks.

Britain already has a working proposal for such a system - which would also require the post office to implement a way of surreptitiously opening, reading and resealing suspect letters - and expects to have formal proposals and costings ready by next month.

Mr Bunyan said the European Commission and the parliament oppose the proposal so far. To become part of the directive, it needs approval from both. But he is alarmed that the EU's technical standards institute has already begun working on a common set of standards to make the proposal workable across Europe, he said.

Ms McKenna said she believed the proposal could ultimately pass both the Parliament and Commission.