Deirdre Clune (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Snowden affair has cast a light on data protection issues and we all need to be aware of them. We need to know what kind of information companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are gathering, what are they doing with that information and how they are using it. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested yesterday that as Facebook was headquartered here in Ireland, it is bound by Irish law and thus Germany's very strict data protection laws were mute. We hear reports of officials in Berlin and in other European cities saying that Ireland and the UK are perceived as the lowest common denominator in terms of privacy. Is this the case? I do not know. We certainly need to know what is going on and what level of information these companies are gathering and the information they are holding outside Europe. We need to have a debate on this in the Chamber and across the country. We need to know what is happening at European level as well. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the Data Protection Commissioner, Mr. Hawkes, certainly need to engage in this debate because information is being gathered on each one of us as we use these platforms. To whom is this information being released and for what purpose is it being used? The debate has not ignited, but the Snowden affair has cast a light on how vulnerable we are, and how private information can be used and can be traded.