Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 51:

In page 47, between lines 8 and 9, to insert the following: “(7) Any processing of personal data pursuant to this Act, including the exchange or transmission of personal data by prescribed persons, the Commissioner and any suitable persons, shall be carried out in accordance with applicable data protection law.

(8) Personal data which are manifestly not relevant for the handling of a specific report shall not be collected or, if accidentally collected, shall be deleted without undue delay.”.

This provides for an amendment to section 16A requiring that, where reports are transmitted by the commissioner or prescribed persons, this be done in a secure manner compliant with data protection law. This implements recommendation 44 of the committee's pre-legislative scrutiny report.

Article 17 of the directive makes clear that all reports be processed in a manner compliant with the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and other data protection laws. Since the GDPR applies universally, it was not originally considered necessary to make specific reference to this. However, to implement the committee’s recommendation on secure transmission of reports, this amendment makes it clear that data protection law applies generally to this legislation and specifically to the transmission of any reports to third parties.