Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by responding on the wider set of amendments. I will address the concerns raised by Senator McDowell. I do not think that he needs to be concerned in respect of those areas, although there are very serious reasons for concern in respect of other inadvertent consequences and loopholes which are opened up by section 43 of the Bill.

I will pick up on one or two points which the Minister made because it is important to clarify them. This will allow me to answer Senator McDowell's questions. The Minister suggested that Article 9(2) of the GDPR did not in itself address the question of political processing and that therefore he had turned to the recital in generating the responses and the elements within this Bill. Article 9(2) is, in fact, very clear. To spell it out, Article 9 is the section of the General Data Protection Regulation that sets out special categories of information. These are data above and beyond. It is not names, addresses and ages. It is information considered to be particularly sensitive such as information on one's health, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs. The General Data Protection Regulation seeks to give special protections to those areas of sensitive data.

Article 9(2) sets out a number of circumstances under which such data can be processed, because it is a realistic set of regulations which recognises the need to process data such as this at certain times. Again this refers to processing data at certain times without consent. Consent is a key issue to which I will return. It recognises that there are circumstances in which consent may not explicitly need to be sought in order to process data. One of those circumstances is laid out in Article 9(2)(d).

It refers to situations in which "processing is carried out in the course of its legitimate activities with appropriate safeguards by a foundation, association or any other not-for-profit body [the inclusion of not-for-profit bodies is important in terms of the rationale for one of my amendments] with a political, philosophical, religious or trade union aim and on condition [this part relates to the questions which Senator McDowell has asked] that the processing relates solely to the members or to former members of the body or to persons who have regular contact with it in connection with its purposes [that is in connection to those political purposes] and that the personal data are not disclosed outside that body without the consent of the data subjects". To clarify, certain of the actions which the Senator has described are completely appropriate and still possible. Other actions may be required to pass the extra bar of consent. That is appropriate.

To look at the register, it has been made very clear by the Minister and his Department that electoral registers are a completely separate issue to section 43. Electoral registers are not included as a special category of personal data. Perhaps they might be if there were markings on them or so on.