Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

EU Legislative Proposals: Discussion

2:00 pm

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We all share the Deputy's concerns and there is certainly a need to ensure a proper balance is struck. However, we must also consider how we can combat human trafficking and the drugs trade. People who are trafficked often do not know the language spoken in the country to which they have been brought; they can be extremely scared and their documentation will have been taken from them. It is difficult to obtain a fix on how to combat serious crime, but the agreement will prove to be a major tool in that regard because the relevant experts will be able to use it to monitor the continual comings and goings of individuals and groups. We will never be able to completely eliminate serious crime, but the agreement will increase our chances of detecting it.

Let us ignore what happened during the past year and concentrate on that which has occurred in recent days in the context of people's personal information being stolen by those who are clearly not going to use it for any legitimate purpose. It is welcome that the European Union has decided to renegotiate this agreement in order to ensure it will be more robust, which is extremely important.

The fact that people will be able to access the relevant information themselves is also very important, as is the fact that a data protection officer in the country in which the information is being stored will have responsibility for ensuring it is kept safe. The only remit of data protection officers in any jurisdiction is to ensure data relating to individuals are both protected and used for the correct purpose.

I am completely assured of that. It is a good thing that we are coming back to this issue today and that we are building a regime of data protection. The world has changed in that in 2005 I am not certain that we were as conscious of breaches of data protection as we are now, but we are very conscious of them now. The robust mechanisms that have been built into this agreement will serve us well. However, I share the Deputy's concerns. We always need to be conscious that the details of an individual that are on the system for legitimate purposes could find their way into a space where they not should be. The fact that individuals will have access to their records and there is a provision built into the system that, in the event that something should happen, they will have a recourse to action should give us some degree of comfort.

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