Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

She is the only working Minister in the House because she is the only Minister who turns up in the House by the look of things. That is a sad reflection because this motion was tabled three weeks ago for debate in the House. There is a Minister of State in the Department of Justice, with no disrespect to the Minister of State who is present. I would put a lot of store by what this Minister of State has to say more than any other.

However, there is a junior Minister in the Department of Justice who could have been here today. This is a disgrace and shows a lack of respect for this House. It cuts across every Department and everything that happens here. I faced the same situation yesterday with a Topical Issue matter. The Minister of State was here for Topical Issue debates yesterday as well. I have said enough about that. We might have another discussion on the matter at some stage.

It is good to see this report being discussed in the Chamber. It was published in July 2021 and is only now coming up for discussion. It is interesting that we had an EU delegation before the Joint Committee on Justice last week to discuss the GDPR and, lo and behold, this report just happened to be approved for discussion in the House around the same time. It is fortunate coincidences like this that make life interesting around here. Things like that continue to go on.

This report was published in July 2021. I wonder what the view of the Department was in the meantime because we in the committee certainly do not know. Surely, more than a year after receiving the report there could have been a response. We have a response today although not from the Minister but from the stand-in Minister of State. That is the problem. This report was sent to the Department in July of last year and we have not had any response before now. I wonder if the response outlined in the Department's speech today is in response to the visit of the EU delegation in recent weeks.

We see that legislative provisions are being introduced on Committee Stage of another Bill that will sort out some of these matters, which seem to have been viewed as problematic in the Department for some time. However, they are being introduced on Committee Stage so there will not be any Second Stage debate on them. We do not know what is to be included because we have not seen the amendments. According to the Minister of State's speech, the Bill was published last week and the amendments in respect of the GDPR will be submitted on Committee Stage. That is the way the Government does business around here. That is fair enough and we will just have to live with it.

Before I heard the Minister of State's speech, I had forgotten the format and that she would have a chance to respond. She has already answered some of my points. I am sure the Department has given consideration to recommendation No. 5, at least. We have heard some more about that with regard to what is being proposed by way of amendments on Committee Stage of another Bill.

From the meeting between the EU committee members and the Joint Committee on Justice, it appears there are discrepancies between some of the statistics the committee used in compiling its report and those the EU committee members were aware of. For example, the report states in its summary and evidence that, from May 2018 to December 2020, draft decisions were produced in only 2% of cases. The EU group, through Clare Daly’s office, insisted there were decisions in 65% of cases. That is certainly an improvement although we must still ask whether resolution in 65% of cases is adequate. It seems to me that it may not be because that resolution rate is very low.

There also appears to be confusion around the definition of resolution of a complaint. The Data Protection Commission says that it does not have to report a decision where a complaint is simply closed after a resolution has apparently been reached with no report issued, that is, where the complaint is amicably solved. This is provided for in section 109(3) of the Data Protection Act 2018, which states:

Where the parties concerned reach an amicable resolution of the subject matter of the complaint, the complaint shall, from the date on which the amicable resolution is reached, be deemed to have been withdrawn by the complainant concerned.

This removes the need for any reporting. However, the same section of the Act states that the commission has a high degree of flexibility in whether it agrees to accept an amicable solution. Perhaps what is at dispute is the willingness of the commission to decide to amicably solve so many cases. That is a result of the woolly language used in the legislation. In the same section of the Act, we see terms such as "considers appropriate" and "may take such steps as it considers appropriate", as well as provisions for when the commission "considers" that something has happened. All of this is in section 109 of the Act. The Act was probably written to be so woolly. That is part of the problem with it.

The question is whether companies should be able to amicably resolve so many complaints when there is a power imbalance that is so much in their favour. That is a question that the commission may need to deal with.

The one thing about this report that has bothered me is that the Data Protection Commissioner has not really engaged with the committee since its publication. Surely if she felt that we had got things wrong, she would have pointed that out in correspondence with the committee since the report was published. Perhaps that is one advantage of it having been so long since the report's publication that this debate is taking place in the House. There has been plenty of time for the Data Protection Commissioner to highlight her concerns, so we can only assume that her office is happy with the report and agrees with the recommendations contained in it.

Of the 17 recommendations in the committee's report, quite a few of them are for the Minister and the Department to deal with. There may be recommendations that the commissioner act in a certain way that is not provided for in the legislation. It would be interesting to hear the Department's view on that, as we probably did earlier when we heard that legislative provisions are going to be rushed in through Committee Stage of other legislation without any proper consideration in the House. That is the Department's view on these recommendations. Surely, as it has been so long since the report was published, the Department will have had adequate time to mull it over. We see that it has and that legislation is now being brought forward when, coincidentally, EU committee members came before the committee a few weeks ago. Those members also met with the Minister at the same time. Perhaps all of this arose from that.

I wrote this response before I saw the Minister of State's speech but the one thing the Department is actually going to do is to act on one of the recommendations I am not sure about, No. 10, in which the committee recommends that the Minister appoint two new commissioners with specific skill sets that are provided for in the legislation. It seems to me that this might be a cosmetic exercise that would give the impression of change without actually achieving the desired effect. That might be what is happening here. I hope I am wrong but time will tell, although it will probably be another three or four years before we have another report and another attempt to look at this matter. This recommendation might have merit if it were part of a complete examination of the legislation to see if it is adequate and provides an overall solution. To my mind, if the law was right, it would not make any difference whether there was one commissioner or 21 but maybe that is just my ignorance and how I view things. If the legislation was adequate, met the needs and did what needed to be done, it would not matter whether there was one, three or five commissioners. We will see what is chosen in the legislation and what the outcome will be. I hope the language of the amendments will not be as woolly and open to interpretation because that is part of the problem with the whole thing. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I hope it will not be so long after we publish our next reports that we actually see some action from the Department.

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