Ms Maria Mullan:

One of the core principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is that laws should respect the evolving capacities and views of the child. Setting an age requirement may violate that. Articles 5 and 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC, relating to the evolving capacities of the child in respect of the views of the child are important and should be respected in order to comply with international standards. The Data Protection Commissioner has a document entitled Children Front and Centre: Fundamentals for a Child-Oriented Approach to Data Processing that recognises children should be able to access their data at any time, as long as they have capacity to do so and it is in their best interests. It is recognised children are data subjects for the purpose of the GDPR also.