Ms Nichola Harkin:

With regard to privacy concerns, one of the biggest principles of the general data protection regulation is data minimisation and the idea that we only collect the information that we need to achieve the purpose we are looking to achieve. That is why we need to drill down into each piece of information required and ask if it will help or if it is just additional information. The privacy issue becomes even more acute as the thresholds become lower. For many employees, their salary details are private and it is sensitive information to them. For the purposes of reducing the gender pay gap, there is an issue with opening that sort of private information within the public domain. We need to be conscious of people's rights to privacy and the serious data protection regulations that we are all now subject to due to GDPR.