Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am acutely aware of the very human stories and the real upset this has caused to survivors. I have engaged and continue to engage with survivors. My absolute priority is to see if there is a technical solution to seek to retrieve that information and those recordings. That is what we are looking at currently. We will continue to engage intensively with the commission on that point, to see if we can retrieve data. In the event that does not manifest, we are looking at the right to rectification and the potential right for each survivor to be able to ensure there is a statement of the survivor's testimony on the record of the commission's archive and to ensure their voices are heard.

I also want to emphasise what I see was a fundamental policy shift that we saw last October in terms of the GDPR access to the archive and the ability of the tens of thousands of former residents of mother and baby homes and county institutions to submit subject access requests to get that essential early-life information that they have been denied for so long. I am incredibly reluctant to take any action which I feel will delay the ability of survivors to start to use those mechanisms under GDPR. That must be borne in mind in our considerations and I know the Deputy recognises that. As I said, work is ongoing on all elements of this with regard to a technical solution, rectification and looking at the wider question of what is feasible in terms of an extension. It is a difficult and complex question, but all elements continue to be examined.

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