Mr. Dale Sunderland:

In terms of funding, we sought €21 million for next year and I think we received just short of €16 million. I want to emphasise that the figure was up from approximately €1.5 million six years ago. It has been a steep trajectory, but necessary given the context in which we operate. We receive our funding from the central Exchequer. We are trained to become a separate Vote for next year. As I said earlier, I think our funding needs to increase to allow us to be more effective. We are committed to getting this job of work done and are working very diligently at it. The first results of those inquiries and the draft decisions will come early next year. However, it is not just about big tech. We have received 11,000 complaints since the GDPR came into effect of which 9,000 came this year. That is up from 2,500 the year before the GDPR. That is a huge increase. They are the ordinary, everyday complaints about access requests from someone seeking their information from a doctor or hospital, for example. All of those complaints must be addressed as well. It is not solely about the big tech companies.

I think it is likely that our funding will continue to be provided from the central Exchequer. That is quite normal for data protection authorities across the European Union. We will continue to make the case as to why we need that funding. On staffing, compared to some of our peer data protection authorities and the larger authorities in the European Union, for example the French data protection authority has over 200 staff. The Italian authority has around 200 staff and the Dutch authority is growing towards 200. The UK Information Commissioner's Office has about 700 staff so they are somewhat of an outlier. When we are the lead authority for these tech companies and their single interlocutor, it means they get to deal directly with us and we take on the responsibility of engaging with all of the other data protection authorities. There is significant overhead in that simply on the administrative side, let alone engaging in regulatory matters. There are tools in the GDPR that we want to maximise such as joint operations. We are actively trying to promote the concept among our peer authorities that we would bring members from other authorities on board in helping us run our investigations. We are hopeful that there will be some progress on that in the near future. I hope I have answered all the Senator's questions.