Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witness for her presentation. Article 51 of the GDPR requires member states to establish an independent authority to monitor and enforce the GDPR. Under the new Bill, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner will be reconfigured as a data protection commission which, depending on the workload, may be assigned more than one commissioner. In 2016, Digital Rights Ireland commenced legal proceedings against the Irish State challenging the independence of the commissioner and alleging that the commissioner did not effectively monitor databases containing personal data that had been created by public bodies. Also, the fact that the commissioner is integrated into the Department of Justice and Equality and that many of the employees of the office are civil servants might raise serious questions about the independence of the office. Under Article 52.6 of the GDPR, the supervisory authority, the data protection commission, must be subject to financial control which does not affect its independence and must have separate public budgets. However, head 12 of the general scheme of the Bill, entitled "Financial control", is blank. Is there any clarity as to how the Government plans to ensure the independence of the body and that it will have a separate public budget? I will put my second question presently.