Mr. Denis Kelleher:

It is hard to see how. That would be conceding some sort of budgetary control. There is no mechanism by which one could do that at present.

In terms of how they have set out the legislation, they have done it in an interesting way. Instead of social media firms and persons who process personal data funding the Data Protection Commissioner's office, every significant data controller in the State has to hire his or her own data protection officer, who is like his or her own mini-supervision. That person is somebody who will effectively review, I suppose one could say, data protection within that organisation. That is how they are funding that. Otherwise, if they did not go down that route, one of the concerns is one would end up with an enormous data protection commissioner's office with thousands of staff. At present, I am not aware of any proposal that the funding would be set at a European level, but under the legislation she has to receive sufficient funding to allow her to do her job.