Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In response to Deputy O'Callaghan's question, one of the problems of not having the kind of system Sinn Féin has developed in recent years is that Mr. McShea and Mr. Carroll, as he will note from their responses, cannot confirm whether all their individual candidates or elected representatives are fully compliant because they have no ability to do that. They can advise and provide proper training and support, and that is important, but can they advise, for example, if every one of their candidates who stores that data has done a data protection impact assessment? They probably cannot. The value of our system is we have a single system we all access locally. Therefore, when the data protection officer comes to us to investigate compliance it is much easier for us to manage. One of the reasons we did that is data protection law is very complicated. For councillors, unelected general election candidates or even experienced politicians, this is a complex area of law. Therefore, if parties are serious about ensuring all their candidates and elected representatives are fully compliant with data protection law, particularly for big parties like Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, it is much better to try to have the type of system we have, otherwise the party centrally does not know if Deputy X and constituency Y are doing the right thing. They hope they are. They are encouraging them to do so but they cannot state that, and that is very clear from the responses of Mr. McShea and Mr. Carroll.