James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a question on the Data Protection Commission. The Minister will be aware that this committee produced a report on the commission. We had people like Mr. Schrems attending the committee. The Minister will also be aware of the ongoing debate and concerns as to the effectiveness and capacity of the Irish Data Protection Office to manage effectively all of Europe's data sets. By extension, there is a potential threat to our economic offering, which is grounded in having tech centres and multinational tech companies in Ireland because it is the gateway to Europe in those jurisdictions. If there was to be any slippage in terms of those operations looking elsewhere, including for data protection regimes, as is beginning to happen in certain quarters in Europe, that could jeopardise our economic offering. It is a specific concern for a number of reasons. I am sure the Minister is familiar with the committee's report on this from last year. I welcome the increased funding of 25%. That is positive. Perhaps the Minister would like to make a brief comment on that at the outset.