Dr. Johnny Ryan:

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for his question. I remember when I was still in industry we had this much-hyped GDPR thing to send and my colleagues in other organisations in Silicon Valley were asking, "Are the Europeans serious about this?" because it would change everything. It would change how you make money. It would change the entire industry. Naively, I said: "Yes, yes I think they are with the law as it's written. I think this means we're going to have to change." The answer is, I think the Oireachtas can do two things. One, we have made a specific request in our opening statement which is that this committee, and the members individually, support Coimisiún na Meán in a very specific measure that it proposes to bring in and urge it to go further so that measure is fully binding and the tech firms cannot wiggle out of that measure. That measure is specific to recommender systems.

The other action, which ICCL has been asking for for quite some time, is that we see pressure on the Data Protection Commission to prove me right when I told my colleagues in industry that Europe was serious. We have the leading role to play in Europe on many of these issues and we do not play them and we have not played them. It is for us to push our enforcer to uphold its responsibility which extends to everyone across Europe.