Dr. Maeve O'Rourke:

My personal view, based on how difficult it is for someone to use the GDPR against a State body without any explicit legislation that helps to do so and without any legal or advocacy assistance, is that we could do with an access to records Bill. It seems to us that the National Archives Act 1986 brings the Ryan commission archive within its scope. Apparently there are 2 million documents in that archive which seemingly already falls within the scope of the National Archives Act. A lot of material still in Government Departments that relates to all of the institutions currently falls under the National Archives Act. We have to ask, however, what it will take for the appropriate resources to be given to the National Archives to make operational all of their obligations. Under that Act, it is envisaged that the director could work with the Ryan commission and operationalise the Act and could do what should have been happening over the decades in all of our institutions and all Departmental records relating to them that are now over 30 years old. I will defer to Ms Crowe and Dr. Buckley in that regard. It may be that legislation is required to set up the compartment of the National Archives with the advisory committee that receives everything and that then brings the funding that is necessary. I would make the point to politicians and the Government specifically that memorialisation was the number one recommendation of the Ryan commission. It was also a recommendation of Mr. Justice Quirke in respect of the Magdalen laundries. Money was supposedly designated to implement these recommendations so, in theory, that money should be available.

In terms of the Freedom of Information Act, this goes to whether the promise could possibly have been made, particularly in respect of the Ryan commission. During my research I noticed that until 2014 the Freedom of Information Act applied to the Ryan commission under the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000. In 2014, in an appendix to the Act which was practically impossible for anybody to notice, the definition of "public body" was stated now to exclude the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, demonstrating that previously it had included it. Now it was to exclude it except for its own records of its own administration. That goes to that promise but it also shows that there may be an issue now with the Freedom of Information Act not being sufficient. It also indicates, although I will defer to Dr. Logue on this, that the records are older than freedom of information legislation and there may be issues around the extent to which the legislation actually applies to them, so there may be a need to strengthen that.

On GDPR, as I have said already, the rights need to be put explicitly in legislation. There is an immediate need to amend the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act and the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002 to say that people have an express right. Ideally, the legislation would provide for a right to advocacy assistance.