Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 October 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The response itself is unsatisfactory, not only in terms of not answering the questions but in the way in which the response came. It was a terrible response. He cites the United Nations, which has no statutory functions at all in the context of data protection.

From what I can see, he has ignored the Data Protection Commissioner, who has such functions. When she was here, the Data Protection Commissioner made it clear that she does not provide an opinion or point of view, she provides rulings. Her point was that the public service is only now catching up on her remit and getting a fuller appreciation of her role. It is a quasi-judicial force, but that does not come across in the response we received from Mr. Watt. There is a great deal of learning to be done by the public service on the role of the Data Protection Commissioner. The response we got back is another example of that. I agree, therefore, that we should write back to Mr. Watt to emphasise again the questions we put and the answers we want. We are not seeking an appraisal from him on how wonderful the public services card is for users. We were not asking that question.

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