Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was a very good initiative to engage them. One of the great things about the DPC is that it publishes where there had been enforcement. Without giving away particular details, it publishes trends of where it has had to intervene. Does Coimisiún na Meán envisage doing this? If not, I highly recommend that it does. From a practitioner's perspective I was able to advise industries or particular sectors of our economy that this had happened; they might not want to be compliant or they might be dodging out of it but I could say it had happened. There was the carrot and stick of good reputation, forward planning and protection of privacy, which are all fantastic, but if companies do not do this and do not have this vision they could look at the DPC website which had criminal prosecutions and the other trends. I imagine that Coimisiún na Meán will put in an annual report the sort of things it will engage in and that will come up.

Criminal prosecutions were mentioned. Who will be in court? This has been a problem in health and safety. It may be the directors of the company but nobody ever goes to jail. It is always a fine. There is not quite the same stick that there would be if it involved the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act and people on the street. Who will go to court? We would all like to think of Mark Zuckerberg being pulled into the Criminal Courts of Justice but that will never happen.