Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our senior citizens from Carlow. We are delighted to have them here today and I hope they have a lovely day. Today I want to talk about the general data protection regulation, GDPR, which is a year old this month. A most complex piece of legislation, the regulation was an attempt to unify existing legislation enacted after the 1995 directive across the European countries. This regulation was designed to guide organisations across the EU on how to protect the personal data of each citizen.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner reported over 6,000 GDPR related complaints in this first year of legislation, of which approximately 90% were deemed valid. There is massive confusion about the regulation. There is a widespread lack of awareness, a shortage in skills across all sectors and quite a lot of enforcement of regulation without actually complying with it. My colleagues have raised the matter previously but more and more people are coming into my clinics with issues about the regulation. Clarity is needed going forward in order for the legislation to work for people. The GDPR significantly strengthens the rights of individuals but it is important to know that it increases organisations' responsibility as to how they collect and use personal data. For many organisations, there is unfamiliarity with the regulation, in some cases to a staggering degree. People coming into my clinics are complaining that they have been denied access to their own information. According to the regulation, everyone has the right to access to data which has been collected concerning him or her. Others in my clinics and on social media have complained because they have received mobile phone text based direct marketing when they had not opted in to receive such texts. There really is massive confusion. Now that we are one year into it, I would like to see more effort being put in to making people more aware. I appreciate that the several investigations by the data commissioner may raise such awareness but I would like to see more done in this regard. This is huge. It is one of the biggest issues to face Senators and Deputies. We need to make sure people have proper information.