Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very struck by all the testimony. We should not have what would effectively be a second wave of indemnity whereby mistakes would be dug in further by a sealing of the records. That point is important. I agree with Dr. Logue that GDPR is not a thing we use to look at legislation after the fact. It is now prevailing law so we cannot legally draft legislation that conflicts with it, no more than with the Constitution which reaffirms our commitment to enforce that European law. It certainly is not a fix that individuals should have to try to use after the fact. It must apply at the design stage of any legislation and this legislation does not meet GDPR standards.

An argument was made which seems to me most disingenuous. I refer to the idea that we would have a gagging order to silence women and stop them talking about their experiences and that we would then say we have balanced out their interests and are choosing to speak for them, versus our natural desire for collective knowing.

It seems that there is neither a case made in terms of individuals nor a case enumerated in the public interest. This is despite the possibility that a very strong public interest argument could be made in terms of an openness of information in healing, learning and moving forward as a State. That was articulated in the course of the testimony.

There is a question about disposal and transfer. We know one of the tests of the GDPR is deciding what is necessary and proportionate. Currently, it seems that there is a mechanism which involves a decision. The director of National Archives is currently in a position to look at necessity and proportionality regarding particular records; this is to apply GDPR processes even if they are not there in terms of law. Under the National Archives Acts, is that a better current solution when it comes to necessity and proportionality?

The protocol of redaction issue was really interesting, as the decision regarding redaction comes under necessity and proportionality. The GDPR gets thrown around a bit. It has been thrown around by Tusla as an excuse to close records. My understanding of the regulation is that it concerns people's rights to information and records and knowing what happened or which decisions were made about them. The GDPR is not there to protect administrative processes or the secrecy of those processes. Ms Crowe described the administrative processes that she was able to extract with regard to overseas adoptions. When we look to the administrative processes within the Department of Education and Skills, we could see what happened with transfer patterns in a moment of abuse. I was really struck by Ms McDonnell Byrne hearing her story and other similar stories. It is her story but it is a pattern so it is not really simply about survivors and perpetrators; it is about processes, systems and abusive practices that were embedded and allowed. We may or may not want to redact the name of an individual, depending on whether that individual was an employee or doing a job that he or she was paid to do, but the process, decisions and the reality of people's lived experiences should certainly not be redacted. This relates to whether a person was sent to hospital or a decision on fostering, for example.

Will the witnesses comment on the importance of having their story placed alongside others and in the public space being able to see that their experience was part of a bad systemic practice that society now acknowledges and rejects? Will they also comment on the gagging rule? There were comments about War of Independence records and the fight for Ireland. All these men wrote about their experiences, including violence and attacks, and it is all in the public realm. Some of the books came out well within the 75-year limit. Those are men's stories and I notice that many women's stories and vulnerable women's stories in particular are not allowed to be told in the public space in the same way.