Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses.

Will the new data protection regulations protect us from what happened with Cambridge Analytica? What about the legalities in terms of domestic law and European law? Will those regulations be enough to protect people, given the transnational nature of what is described as the platforms? In her presentation, Ms Dixon stated there is no certainty with how effective political micro-targeting is. Some people in the political world might disagree with that. In the context of Brexit, which is having a significant impact on this island and our neighbouring island, is there not a relevance in micro-targeting?

There is a particular concern about young people under 18 years of age. They are connected into the big bad world or the big good world, whichever way one looks at it. They are vulnerable in many ways.

What is being done to protect the vulnerable from micro-targeting and what is being done to prevent psychometric profiling of juveniles and children - people under 18 years of age? Even in the political context, what is being done? It is of huge concern to parents and people in education.

I do not want to comment on INM but my point is related to that issue. On the collection of data on workers in various industries and the harvesting of data in terms of what they look at on social media and their private data that is stored, has the commissioner received many complaints from workers, representative bodies or whistleblowers in the board room of some companies about other companies in this State? People use computers every day in their workplace and there are ways of hacking those data. Has the commissioner received many complaints or is she pursuing many complaints against other companies in the Twenty-six Counties?