Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It requires trilocation. It is all part of the joy of this job, as I am sure the witnesses are deeply aware.

I want to start with a few general observations I will pick up on the point that was made about the space for civil society. It is not just governments; there is a huge move among those who want to take the freedoms and liberties of others away and to push back against civil society. Maybe I am a little naïve, but it seems to me that most of the rhetoric against NGOs and civil society is outside. There is some of it in this building; we hear it, and it is often a reflection of those wider currents of those who want to tear apart the fabric of society, but it is a growing problem and the fact we are hearing it in here more is concerning. As Ms Jourová said, this is a general problem across the Union.

The fundamental rights of European citizens are absolutely worth protecting but the challenge is that, quite often, we need to see greater enforcement. In this committee, we have spoken a lot about GDPR and in regard to data protection. There are those of us on the committee who are constantly beating that drum and expressing our concerns about the undermining of European Union citizens’ fundamental rights because of a failure of enforcement of the GDPR. I do not know if this made it into the rule of law report or not, but one thing I would like to flag up is that going hand in hand with this issue of GDPR privacy and fundamental rights are issues relating to data gathering and real-time bidding, which is something the Irish Council of Civil Liberties is campaigning against and I believe it has some court actions in that regard. Real-time bidding has the potential to be a huge engine for disinformation and manipulation. For me, it comes down to enforcement. Anything that can be done to improve the issue of enforcement or to highlight the weak areas of enforcement within Ireland is fundamental for me.

It was positive to hear Ms Jourová talk about defamation and strategic lawsuits against public participation, SLAPP, and that the Minister is in a similar place to her. This is something we have seen a lot of here. I ask Ms Jourová to talk more about the moves afoot in that regard, which would be very helpful to us, as a committee. One of the things that is worth flagging up is that one of the recommendations was around the strength of our ethics legislation and the strength or, in reality, the weakness of the ethics enforcement of the Standards in Public Office Commission. We see this today. We have news today that a member of An Bord Pleanála, one of our national bodies to do with planning and development, is to have criminal sanctions brought against him, and I will say no more about that. At the same time, there are court cases collapsing because An Bord Pleanála is not contesting claims that it made its decisions in an inappropriate manner. This flows directly from those weak ethics and weak ethics enforcement. I will say no more about it lest I get myself or someone else in trouble.

I would be interested to hear more about the challenges of enforcement and, in particular, recommendations for Ireland in regard to improving enforcement in general, and some more information in regard to SLAPP and that kind of work.