Mr. Dale Sunderland:

From a general perspective, we see the intent of the proposed Bill and we know further work has to be carried out on it. This does not fully answer the Deputy's question, but some elements must be worked out further. Therefore, we are satisfied they do meet the proportionality and necessity requirements under EU law. An information session is identified as a safeguard under the proposed legislation. As I referred to already, it is not inherently or necessarily repugnant to the GDPR. It is just one of the solutions or options the Department has chosen and the Minister is proposing to allow for that balancing of rights under Article 15(4), and that may be quite appropriate.

The age limit for this framework does not stop an access request from a minor in other circumstances. Unless the legislation explicitly restricts all access requests from a minor, the right of access under GDPR still stands. Further rights to request access may exist outside of this framework, but the proposed Bill is trying to implement a framework to allow these issues to be addressed and done in a coherent and consistent manner. I do not have anything further to add on the issues the Deputy has raised other than to say that, from our assessment at this stage, there does not appear to be anything that is overly problematic here, but we are still reviewing the proposed legislation. We did raise issues with the Department and we will want to see a further iteration of the Bill before we would be happy to say one way or another that there are no concerns from a data protection perspective.