David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for a most interesting piece of work. It is fascinating, and timely as well. I have gone through it in detail. I am on another committee dealing with foreign affairs and defence. In the past number of months, we have been working on cybersecurity, hybrid threats and that kind of stuff. It is a whole different world and it is moving so fast. It is good they have brought this today, and for commissioning the research. It is a responsible thing to do. One thing that jumped out at me, which I want to bring to their attention, is the use of the word "surveillance". When I looked it up, one definition was, "close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal." The word "monitoring" has also been used. I came across the word "oversight". I wonder, if somebody were to be asked if they were happy about surveillance in their workplace, whether that word itself is a bit loaded.

That is just one thing that struck me when I saw the word itself. If the word was “oversight” or “monitoring”, I wonder if we would have received the same kind of responses from the people who were questioned. It is just a comment. That is not at all to take from the value or importance of what is here. I am minded of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Fourand everybody being watched all the time. There has been lots of work done in that space, in the world of media, film and so on over the years. It is moving so fast now. Artificial intelligence has been mentioned on a few occasions. I think somebody last week said that the development of artificial intelligence is going to be more groundbreaking than the development of the Internet itself. That is pretty scary and it is moving so quickly. I have looked at ChatGPT. It is just unbelievable how we can put something into it and straight away it will write an essay or a poem. It can do all this stuff for us, no problem at all. God knows what is happening.

Dr. O’Sullivan referred a few times to co-governance with worker representatives. I think that is good and I agree with it. She has also been talking about the limitations of GDPR. We have had GDPR mentioned on a few occasions. That is having an impact on all of us as well. She might say a little more about the limitation and how it pertains to this.

Previously we did a lot of work on remote working, the right to request remote working and all that kind of stuff. We had a report on it with which Dr. O’Sullivan is probably familiar. One of the things that came up was that an employer has responsibility for the safety of a worker at work, whether that is at home or in the office. We were wondering how that might happen. In one instance, it was said to us that the worker could take the employer on a virtual journey through his or her home to make sure it was safe. There is a whole area here about who is responsible for the safety of a worker and for ensuring staff have the proper chair and desk and that their workspace is actually safe. There is a certain amount of supervision and monitoring going on there and there might be a little tension in that. I do feel that the idea of a code of conduct is important, as Deputy O’Reilly said a while ago. We have a lot of work to do to catch up. It is moving so fast; it is moving away from us as we are working. This place moves very slowly as we know. Legislation takes a long time to come through.

I think one of the witnesses said at one stage that workers did not know if the computers were monitored or not. If the computer is supplied by the employer, is there not some form of responsibility on the employer to ensure it is used for the purpose for which it was supplied, in other words, that somebody would not be doing private business on a work-supplied computer or doing something illegal or immoral, for instance? How does an employer ensure that nothing illegal happens? The employer might be liable as well if something was going on with a computer that was supplied by the employer, without having some form of monitoring of the device. I am not going to use the word “surveillance”. I will give the witnesses a chance to address those few points as I am conscious of time. I will contribute again.