Dr. T.J. McIntyre:

That is a very good question. The N.M. case and the English cases are focusing very much on the question of state disclosure and requests by employers in the course of the hiring process. They do not address the question of what the media can do. There are two carve-outs here that are important. One relates to the data protection sides of things where, as the Deputy will be aware, there is an exclusion for journalistic activity from the GDPR rules that apply to processing of convictions. The second relates to article 8 where in a number of cases the European Court of Human Rights has said, most recently in a case brought by two murderers against Germany, that it is open to the state to decide to adopt rules that will allow, for example, newspapers to talk about old convictions and to include information about old convictions in their archives, and that is compatible with the article 8 rights of the individual.