Dr. Fred Logue:

There has to be an individual remedy. Bodies like the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, and the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, handle between 5,000 and 8,000 complaints a year, and make decisions on them. They have the same kind of budget as the DPC and have that investigatory and supervisory role as well as an adjudication role. It can and is being done in this country. They hold hearings around the country and have appellate jurisdictions. Even the RTB has a telephone mediation service that deals with and closes 25% of the disputes over the phone through professional mediation. The model is already there.

There should be some sort of functional separation between the quasi-judicial part and the more administrative part. They are quite different skill sets and this should be looked at.

The committee should be looking at the Zalewski judgement which recently reviewed the Workplace Relations Commission's procedures. In data protection, for example, there is no penalty for giving false evidence to the DPC, there is no cross-examination and you cannot have a hearing or test the evidence. If someone says he or she cannot find something or he or she has looked for it, there is no way of determining whether that is a fact. The jurisdiction needs to be kept with the DPC and not go into the courts. They are not set up for that level of detailed adjudication on these things. We just do not have a court system that can handle that.

To answer Senator Byrne, policymakers and people like our legislators have a very good grasp of privacy and data protection. It is a testament to the members of this committee and to the wider body politic that they take a great deal of care and are very interested in ensuring Ireland retains its position as the leading jurisdiction for data protection in Europe.