Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Many people are very angry and disappointed by the process that we have seen over the last number of weeks, and by the nature and the design of this legislation. There has been an outpouring of support that I have not seen since my first election into politics. Therefore I am making one last appeal, however likely at this stage, for us to go back to the drawing board. I have two questions for the Minister that will tee up Sinn Féin's amendments, which will be moved by Senator Boylan. My questions relate to the amendments that we are discussing, that is, around the issue of the holding of records in the Department. Will we not have a situation now where victims and survivors have to litigate against the Minister's archive in order to obtain a copy of their transcript or evidence, or indeed any other records that the Minister holds that relate to the survivors or those who have endured forced family separation? Following from previous contributors, my second question is this: should the Bill not clarify, for the avoidance of all doubt, that the GDPR applies to this archive?