Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 15 ensures the Bill includes the broadest possible definition of personal data. This comes back to guaranteeing beyond a shadow of a doubt that adopted people and their relatives will be entitled to access information. Given the manner in which this access has been denied and continues to be, as well as the levels of distrust in how this Bill will be interpreted by State bodies, I think we are obliged to include extensive and explicit definitions of information relating to adopting and care arrangements. There cannot be any ambiguity at this time. State bodies, institutions and the church need to have no room whatsoever to continue to deny people access to their information.

The Minister referenced in the discussion on amendment No. 14 how a person could request all information or some of the information. If that is to make sense, then when somebody ticks that box to choose all information pertaining to him or her, we need to go as far as we possibly can in this legislation to ensure all of that information is provided to that person. There reason I tabled the other amendment is because, for example, if you requested information about your parents, and that was the only thing you were setting out to look for, if there was potentially information there about you relating to, for example, an illegal vaccine trial carried out on you or anything like that, you could find that out without knowing to ask for it. If we are to accept that, as discussed in amendment No. 14, a person has to pick either just the information requested or all information, we have to ensure that when that person says he or she wants all information, that person absolutely gets all of that information.

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