Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

I will comment very briefly. On the question of records being handed over, that is very welcome and it is good to see that. Our preference is that we would not be dependent on organisations voluntarily making that decision. There is provision in the Bill that would make it an offence to destroy records. If we are concerned that records may be destroyed, once they are destroyed, prosecuting someone after the event is too late at that stage. If we are concerned about the safekeeping of records in private hands, the better approach would be to bring all those records into the hands of State agencies and to do that proactively rather than sitting back and waiting for them to be handed over.

On the extraterritorial issue, obviously there are limits as to what the law can do in that regard. The Oireachtas can only go so far in terms of legislating for what people can access. If there are records held outside the jurisdiction, one would be getting into interactions with the legal systems of other states and, if anything, it becomes a lot more complicated.