Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Three revolutions are taking place in the world at the moment. The first is the digital revolution, which has been happening now for several decades. In line with Moore's law, technology is operating relentlessly in increasing our capability to process data. There is also a clean energy revolution taking place. We are moving towards renewable power and allowing efficiency in a range of different ways. There is also a transport revolution starting now in terms of allowing for shared access to vehicles and moving away from ownership of vehicles towards hire in a range of innovative ways. I mention all three because they are connected in the sense that the digital revolution is very much influencing the other two. When one starts looking at how to evolve the clean energy revolution, for example, in the roll-out of smart energy meters in a home or electric vehicles, one realises it is the data communications system, the digital systems, that are key. The same is true in terms of how the transport revolution will work. The way we change how we move around cities in particular will require people to be confident about the sharing of data. It is a communications revolution that brings the transport revolution as much as anything else. The three revolutions have certain characteristics in that they involve network systems. They are much flatter, typically horizontal, and less hierarchical structures that are created in industry or in power systems and each one feeds off the other. They are revolutions that will change society as well as those three technological areas.

As a country, we have a real interest in getting the revolutions right. In this city and around the country, we have managed to attract many of the companies at the very cutting edge of the digital revolution in particular and we are good at the clean energy revolution too. It is incredible when one looks at our recent history over the past 50 years that we have moved from importing foreign direct investment in manufacturing, for example, all the semi-conductor industries and biopharmaceuticals, and to our ability in the past 15 to 20 years to attract all the digital industries and the latest social network platforms. That has been an incredible success for this country. More than any other country, we need to get the regulation of it right. The ethical rules around how we govern such a system are critical for this country. We want to gain from the clean energy, digital and transport revolutions. We want to attract the jobs and develop our own industrial capability, but we also want to look after people.

The revolutions are affecting everything in society. They affect the way the education and health systems will work and how the media works. Our financial system is about to be eaten up and completely changed by the digital revolution that is taking place. Today's debate is mission critical for this country given that we are discussing the legislation to regulate that digital revolution. I believe the best approach to it is to start from first principles of the characteristics of the revolution that we want to apply. One of the first principles we should apply is that of privacy and of trying to protect people's privacy in the sharing of all that data and information because if we do not get that right people will not trust us regarding the scale of the way we are going to use it. This revolution is only starting and in the next 20 to 30 years, the applications we will need to apply will require people to trust the data, and the first principle of privacy applies in that regard.

It is difficult because there are other principles that in some ways are equally important although they are slightly conflicting. For example, there is the networked, flat, hierarchical sharing system of open access and transparency among the principles of how this new revolutionary network system works. Similarly, there are principles that we would want to provide in order to allow for payment to content providers, but at the same time we also want to provide for shared fair-use systems so that people can benefit from that characteristic of the network system. The difficulty when it comes to legislating is that one has those different principles that sometimes conflict. In addition, one also has to take into account as the legislator, as well as the principles, the norms of what the technology is doing and try to understand it. Technologically, it is incredibly complex regarding what one can and cannot do in terms of how the digital communications system works, even the way the zeros and ones move along fibres and go through routers and are stored. If one does not understand the technological level of what the revolution is bringing, it is very hard to get the regulation of it right. It is only after one has worked out one's first principles and the norms of what is happening that one gets down to the practical job of legislating, but legislate we must.

For too many years, the political system across Europe and the world has stood back. In Europe, the European Court of Justice, ECJ, has effectively become the legislating arm for the digital revolution because in the absence of political certainty as to how we would do that, the European Court of Justice has stepped into the breach and effectively regulated for the world in the sense that Europe is big enough to set the level of standards that would apply. By and large, it has done a good job but it is not up to the ECJ to legislate, rather it is up to us and the European Parliament. The Bill before the House comes from the European Parliament. It was the Parliament which stood up for the values of privacy, for example, in recent years. Perhaps I am biased because it was colleagues and friends of mine who were responsible. I refer, for example, to Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green parliamentarian, whom I found superb in steering the regulation through the Parliament. He was the Parliament's rapporteur for the GDPR.

There was cross-party agreement on the privacy directives we developed in recent years, which is one of the most interesting characteristics of the matter. There has been agreement on the left and the right - liberal, socialist, Green, Christian Democrat and every other party - and a fairly broad consensus was reached within the European Parliament. It was the Parliament which steered the Council. The Commission helped, but to my mind the Parliament should be recognised for setting out the broad principles of how to regulate data protection. Now we are translating it into our domestic legislation. This is incredibly complex legislation and it is not easy for us parliamentarians to parse through the details. To understand the details, one has to understand the scale of the revolution, the scale of the technological changes that are occurring and the scale of the complex battle between different principles. I look forward to Committee Stage to try to contribute and participate in the debate on the complex and difficult things we need to do.

I understand the original version of the Bill tried to exempt the public service from the provisions of transparency and openness and I am pleased that was removed. We are starting from a far better place now in that the public service realises it is not exempt from the revolution that is taking place and it must be exemplary in terms of the principles we apply. It is not all about security and protecting the institutions themselves, rather it is about being willing to be open and transparent. I am all the more certain of that after the session we had yesterday afternoon with Facebook where we were trying to tease out some of the immediate issues. We are fortunate here, by and large, as we are well placed to do a good job. We have a strong independent legal system. The judgments that Mr. Justice Gerard Hogan and others gave in recent years show we have real strength in our legal ability. We have a strong regulatory system. I believe we are one of the best countries in Europe in terms of regulatory process. We are not seen in that way at the moment, as the rest of Europe sees us as a soft touch in the regulatory area, but it is possible for us to up our game. The number of staff under Data Protection Commissioner, Helen Dixon, has increased to approximately 100 from 30 four or five years ago, but I think we need to double the number again, if not more, because the scale of the responsibility we have as the home to the digital companies is one that we should take with the utmost seriousness. We have 5,000 civil servants in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and we have 100 in the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner when the Data Protection Commissioner is pretty much dealing with the entire world in terms of rules on the Internet revolution. That requires a dramatic scale of response and importance in terms of how we get those rules right.

I am pleased the Bill is before the House and I look forward to contributing on behalf of the Green Party on Committee and Report Stages. The Bill is important, and it is important we get the legislation right. I hope the Minister will be open to amendments. The nature of the revolution is that one collaborates, tries to seek consensus and listens to different voices.

If that attitude is taken during the progress of this Bill through the Parliament, it will be the better for it.

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