Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the General Scheme of the Birth Information and Tracing Bill 2021

Ms Mari Steed:

I am happy to address this question. I believe we are now at a crucial point where we need a fresh non-governmental or quasi-governmental entity, perhaps a national system repository, that would provide the service. The players to date are too entwined in the past horrible history of it to be effective regulators of our information. Perhaps it will be a GDPR entity that will deal with it. At the heart of it is a GDPR issue. It is the right of access to information. I could see it being a separate new body.