Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a very worthwhile amendment and quite apt in view of the Data Protection Commissioner's report, which I believe the Minister intends to challenge following advice from the Attorney General's office that this is lawful, despite the Data Protection Commissioner saying it is unlawful. A lot of unlawful activity is being found out in Britain but the Attorney General advised that something was lawful and his job may be in peril as a result. Data are more valuable than oil in this day and age. Every time we click on something on our phones we are asked to accept cookies. I do not know what this means or where it is going but whenever I go onto social media, or google something in which I am interested such as holidays, the adverts and other sites come up again, so it is certainly going somewhere. We need to be very careful. We are in a grey area so making this mandatory for jobseeker's allowance amounts to diktat.