Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We heard news reports this morning about the major security breach relating to Twitter last night. This morning, the European Court of Justice has struck down the agreement between the EU and the US facilitating the transfer of data between those two parties, which generally occurs where there is a parent company within the US. That is at a macro level. My concern is at the micro level where I am thinking about the small businesses in the villages of Inchicore, Kimmage, Crumlin and Walkinstown that still have to adhere to standards of privacy by design. This is an important concern and a serious cost to businesses. Can the Leader facilitate a debate on privacy by design and, perhaps, the establishment of a task force to support small businesses and provide them with the guidelines necessary to enable them to adhere to privacy requirements?Data is the new gold. We rely on Gmail and on the facilitation of communications that is free, but businesses have to consider what is the trade-off and whether the business is at risk. I believe small businesses do not have the competencies to provide that for themselves. Therefore, at a national level, we need to provide guidelines and we need to red-circle funding to ensure there are grants. There is a great Bill coming through the House this afternoon and in that I ask that we would red-circle moneys for the provision of support to small businesses, in particular with regard to adherence to their privacy standards, so that, at a personal level, each of our residents can adhere to their entitlement to their own privacy as a human right.