Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

There can be many advantages to a miscellaneous provisions Bill and it can be useful in legislating quickly to remedy an oversight. Far too often, however, the Government abuses this gift to insert amendments at the last minute with little or no scrutiny. Amendments Nos. 2 and 18 seek to diminish the efficacy of the DPC further. It is a blatant effort to hamstring and silence. The amendments come in the twilight of the legislation’s passage through the Houses, being included at the last minute. In fact, one of the amendments attempts to shoehorn in an entire section, 26A, which is a gagging clause that will prohibit persons engaging with the DPC from disclosing information, information the Minister has claimed is confidential even before enacting this Bill.

The amendments’ wording will give the DPC broad powers to designate information, including even information that is not commercially sensitive, as confidential. How the DPC goes about its tasks is already opaque. It is exempt from most freedom of information rules and does not hold public hearings. These amendments will make it even less transparent. The Government inserted them in the final Stages of the Bill, evading proper scrutiny. The amendments may hinder EU co-operation in upholding people’s data rights. The DPC’s relationship with its European counterparts appears to be poor. We can see that in disputes over a sanction that the DPC did not want to impose but was subsequently imposed after the DPC engaged with counterparts. The DPC is currently suing all other GDPR supervisory authorities at the European Court of Justice. The Government’s amendments may continue this behaviour, empowering the DPC to limit the proper flow of information to its European counterparts.

The amendment may conflict with forthcoming European law and we talked about that recently. The European Commission is due to propose new rules for how GDPR enforcers work together and how they treat people who bring complaints to them. We do not have a date for that but we have been told it is expected fairly soon. It looks like this has been a very successful effort in lobbying by the big tech companies. To do this without adequate scrutiny, where it has the potential to do great harm, is really taking very serious risks. Essentially, withdrawing these two amendments would be the better option so that they can be introduced or considered at another point, when there is adequate time to go through the entire legislative process whereby they are open to amendment, they come back on Report Stage and they go through the proper rigour.

I have had correspondence from a lot of organisations and individuals on this. There is a real concern about what is being proposed here and the method being used to do this. It is being done in a way that is bypassing the kind of scrutiny that we have a right to expect when laws are being made. There has been no effort to consult on this or to involve the public in this change. These are substantial changes and the Social Democrats will certainly be opposing these two amendments. That said, the better option would be to withdraw them.

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