Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Arising from the discussion, I believe there is huge merit in the retention of the information. If the choice was that the records were to be destroyed or not, I do not think they should be destroyed. The difficulty is the potential for the release of the information. The reality is that access to information in Ireland has been revolutionised in the past 30 years and has changed enormously even in the past ten years, whether through freedom of information legislation or otherwise. The technological advances in the area of information have been enormous and 99% of that has been positive.

The difficulty is the interpretation of the information. We can get almost any kind of information we want in a household but how we interpret it is a major difficulty. How can we future-proof or predict how people will access and use information in 2080 or 2081? It is something we cannot consider in 2015. We could not consider ten years ago how we could access information today. Can there be some kind of provision in the legislation to future-proof members' concerns and those of the public and the survivors in balancing the public right to information and the individual's right to protection?