Seanad debates

Thursday, 22 March 2018

Data Protection Bill 2018: Report Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of David NorrisDavid Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and the discussion on the Bill. I also very much welcome the move by Senator McDowell to open the matter up for discussion. I imagine that some of these amendments arise from the situation caused by the revelations about Cambridge Analytica. They are indeed extremely worrying.

As an aside, with regard to university elections and access to data, it is a significant hindrance that candidates in university elections are disbarred from access to the database which provides details of email addresses. I have had a long battle about sending out manifestos and using allowances. One of the responses I received was that I could easily do such work by email. One cannot do work by email when one does not have the email addresses. It seems to me there should be some flexibility.

The Minister said that the Bill would prevent Ireland becoming a hub for interference in other countries' elections. I hope he is right, but I do not know whether that is the case. People are now so extraordinarily sophisticated, especially in Russia, that it is difficult to predict exactly what they can or cannot do. It is important that we allow freedom to candidates in elections to use information from databases.

Some of the data protection issues are a little bit fussy. Some time ago I sent an email to a small section of the electorate and asked my secretary to contact the agency which looked after this for me. I wanted to advise it that I wished to exclude the people to whom I had already sent material. When we contacted the company, it told us it had destroyed that information under data protection rules. It is a bit mad that when one selects a target group and instructs a company to send out materials, on contacting the company later it then says it no longer has the information under data protection law. Who is being protected? There are some significant issues.

I welcome the fact that we appear to be addressing the kind of situations which have been revealed to us by Cambridge Analytica. I welcome what is being done. I say that even though I am computer illiterate and hope to remain so.

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