Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendment No. 25. Sections 38 and 39 are new additions to the Bill and refer to the processing of personal data and specific categories of personal data by political parties, elected representatives and candidates for political office. The Department and the various political parties in government or in opposition seem determined to accommodate what they see as the peculiarities and seeming uniqueness of the Irish electoral system. This is in spite of the fact that what is proposed in terms of the processing of political opinion in the Bill will still be illegal under the GDPR.

Section 38, for the most part, is fairly harmless. It defines electoral activities for the first time in the legislative process but this definition is not very useful for the other relevant, extremely important and problematic sections to which the definition of section 38 refers, namely, sections 47, 57 and 58. We propose to delete section 38(2). Communication of the type described in section 38 is clearly committed under the GDPR as a "legitimate interest". I am not sure why we need to declare such communication to be a task in the public interest in such specific terms given that processing in the public interest in the GDPR gives us scope to bypass the consent of the data subject, for example. I understand the basic necessity for political parties to communicate with the electorate, and this kind of communication is, obviously, for the most part in the public interest. I wonder why we need such an explicit statement of this fact in the Bill.

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