Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The crucial issues are amendments Nos. 23 and 24. Amendment No. 23 suggests that membership of the board should be advertised through the Public Appointments Service, PAS. It is standard and good practice to know there is an independent body adjudicating as to who is qualified and appropriate to sit on this board. Members should be appointed by the Minister on the recommendation of PAS, and with the agreement of the Government. It is important to recognise this board will cut across every single Government Department. It will have oversight on data sharing under every Department and its partners, as well as every company the Departments work with. It is very important that not only is the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, who has full responsibility, satisfied, but that all Ministers are satisfied with the representation that is there, and that there is accountability at Cabinet level.

There is a real danger of public service capture of this board so, in my final amendment in this section and on this theme, amendment No. 24, I propose no more than half of the board should be employees of a Department or a public body. This is to ensure we do not have full self-regulation but that there are genuinely independent members of the board. At least two members of the board should have an expertise in the area of data protection, and there are other expertises that will be needed also, but data protection is crucial. Finally, at least one member should be both an independent non-employee of the Department or public body and have expertise in the area of data protection. This ensures there will be at least one independent data protection expert who is not beholden to, or employed by, those they are going to adjudicate upon.

These are my proposals. This is me setting out some ideas of what a transparent data governance board might look like. If the Minister has proposals he would like to bring forward, I am very happy and open to hearing them. If not, I will certainly press these amendments on Report Stage, if not today.