Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are a number of parts to this amendment. I support the spirit of it. I know there may be issues relating to the question of impact assessment and who the appropriate person to perform an impact assessment is, whether the data controller or the Data Protection Commissioner. The key to this and the spirit in which it was discussed earlier is something the Minister will have seen a strong feeling about across the House, and I hope he will be able to work with us all on it because it will come up in multiple sections. Throughout the Bill, it simply allows Ministers to act following consultation with the commission with no guarantee that the decisions made by the Minister will in any way reflect the advice of the commission or even have due regard to it. There is far too much ministerial discretion. We need to have other safeguards. I think that the safeguards proposed under subsection (e) of the amendment, "In the event that the Minister does not follow the recommendation of the Commission, the Government shall cause to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas a statement containing a reasoned written explanation of the decision of the Government not to follow the recommendation of the Commission", is stronger than what I had put forward relating to section 32 and is probably better. All parties, with the exception of the Government party, have expressed concern about the formulation throughout the Bill which allows Ministers to seek advice and then act as they wish without giving any explanation when they choose to stray, dissent or override the commission. Given the huge importance of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, as we have heard eloquently expressed by the Minister on Second Stage, surely we need to have some kind of safeguard. I urge the Minister to note that this issue is arising in multiple places from multiple sources and to look genuinely to how, every time we have a point of pure ministerial discretion, we at least ensure that there will be some kind of written rationale for the decisions being made.