Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Section 43 of the Bill deals with a political party and uses a definition of a political party. I am not trying to stray outside the groupings. The section reads:

Subject to suitable and specific measures being taken to safeguard the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects, the processing of personal data revealing political opinions shall be lawful where the processing is carried out in the course of election activities for the purpose of compiling data on peoples’ political opinions by—(a) a political party,

(b) a body established by or under an enactment (other than the Act of 2014 or a former enactment relating to companies within the meaning of section 5 of that Act), or

(c) a candidate for election to, or a holder of, elective political office.

The problem I want to tease out slightly here is that we are talking about processing carried out in the course of election activities. That is temporally limited. To take a concrete example, Joe Soap is standing as an Independent candidate in the constituency of Kerry. He has a group of canvassers out working for him. Those canvassers work door to door with the registers in, for example, Tralee. They note that Senator David Norris has said that he is concerned about issues A, B and C. He lives in Tralee for the purposes of this example.