Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in. My apologies but I am a bit hoarse. We have talked about this stuff for nearly two years but it seems like a lifetime and yet I still do not understand it all. I do not envy the delegation their jobs. I would rather be pouring concrete in my bare feet than do their job. I have prepared a number of questions, which are a criticism and simply seek more information. A lot of it springs from our encounters with the Ministers while we debated this stuff over the period. I have broken my questions into a couple of different sections.

As much as 30% of all complaints from 25 May to 31 December 2018 and 39% of all complaints made in the same period. under the pre-GDPR Acts, were access rights complaints. In terms of the number of complaints received, access rights complaints were the biggest issue. Does the delegation have a breakdown of the different types of access rights complaints? How many relate to the one-month time limit for organisations to comply with access requests? Are statistics available on the length of time that elapses between receiving a complaint, initiating an investigation and completing an investigation? Howe does the DPC enforce the one-month limit for organisations to comply with access requests? What enforcement options are available if an access request complaint cannot be resolved amicably as with case study No. 5 in the report?

I appreciate that the DPC is the de facto European regulator and has an enormous amount of work to get through. According to anecdotal evidence provided to me by various people who have made access rights complaints to the DPC that it is slow to deal with a complaint that a data controller has simply ignored an access request. If these procedures and delays are a result of insufficient funding then the funding of the DPC should be examined. If the cause is something else then perhaps the way the complaints are handled needs to be examined. Ms Morgan said that the DPC has 135 staff at present, and that there will be 160 staff by the end of the year and 190 staff by the end of next year. Is that enough staff?