Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----but it is what would arise. Turning to our amendment No. 51, section 47 is important and troublesome. Under it, the Government proposes to rely on recital 56 to justify allowing political parties anywhere to process the political opinions of anyone for the purposes of electoral activities. There is no territorial limit. If a German Cambridge Analytica wanted to process the political opinions of a few million Germans to sway the next German election, it would just have to send the data to Ireland. With such a vague definition of "electoral activities", there is no time limit on when political parties can process the data. People who want to get their hands on data about political opinions just have to put themselves forward as candidates for election. Lo and behold, they would then get around the general prohibition in the GDPR on that kind of data processing without explicit consent. That is why we are opposing the section. There is no non-creepy reason for allowing anyone to do this and profile people without their consent. One can profile people all one wants if one gets their consent.

All of Ireland's main data protection experts are vehemently against this section. Before Committee Stage, they wrote an open letter to The Irish Timescalling for the removal of the section's blanket exemptions on the processing of personal data revealing political opinions. These people pursued litigation previously and they know what they are talking about, so we would be silly to ignore their viewpoint. What is being proposed in this section is permission to create databases, profiles or whatever one wishes to call them for people who have nothing to do with a political party.

I will respond to points made by Deputy O'Callaghan on Committee Stage. Polls, focus groups, canvass tallies and so forth would still be allowed if this section were deleted. If people plan on using such information in the course of one of those activities, all that is required is for consent to be gained to note someone's political view, name and address. That is not a major ask, given that we are discussing the collection of personal data that can be used to match information to identify people.

Our amendment No. 68 is important. This section removes the right of citizens to object to their data being processed in order to post them letters and flyers from politicians. It tries to claim that mailings from politicians are not direct marketing. Articles 17 and 21(2) of the GDPR make it clear that the citizen has an absolute right to object to the use of his or her personal data to send him or her direct mail, text messages, etc. This section, however, allows politicians to send out unsolicited mail and stops people from objecting to that. In a balancing test, the desirability of citizens being informed about what their politicians are doing against the rights of citizens to object if they feel that their privacy is being invaded should come down on the side of the citizen. Citizens should have the right to object. Politicians get that all of the time. For example, people have told me that they do not want me to send them leaflets. That is fine, but this section removes the right to object. That is wrong.

Amendment No. 71 addresses section 58, which proposes to remove the right of citizens to object to the processing of their data for any purpose as long as it is carried out by political parties, candidates or the referendum commission. While various exemptions under the GDPR permit processing in the public interest, recital 69 makes it clear that the right to object in those circumstances must remain. Even if we accept that the processing of personal data by political parties for electoral purposes is in the public interest, which is arguable, we cannot strip people of their right to object to it while staying compliant with the GDPR. This amendment must be carried.

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