Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

He was not brave enough to name the organisation but that is who he is talking about.

The Sinn Féin amendments are a final attempt to facilitate the Minister to do the right thing by providing survivors and other individuals affected by this investigation the right to access all the information that pertains to them in the archive. Under the Minister's amendments, the records will remain sealed. The issue is not about sealing them. The issue is that this legislation does nothing to unseal them. The only information that will be accessible to those affected is the limited database that is going to Tusla. Survivors are fundamentally opposed to that body holding their information.I listened intently to the Minister in both Houses and heard him refer to the Attorney General's advice to which he is bound. According to the legal expert with whom I have spoken, he is not bound by the advice of the Attorney General. It is advice. Putting that aside, let us consider the advice allegedly given by the Attorney General, namely, that the right of access to personal data set out in Article 15 of the GDPR is expressly prohibited by section 39 of the Commissions of Investigation Act and that Article 23 of the GDPR provides for exceptions in a range of circumstances, including those relating to the administration of justice. Other Members said that national law cannot override EU law, particularly that which is derived from the EU charter. The Minister stated that section 39 exempts the records from Article 15 requests; it does not. In fact, it does not even mention Article 15 because it could not unless it had a time machine and could see into the future. The Commissions of Investigation Act was passed in 2004 while the GDPR was passed in 2016. Instead of section 39, to which the Minister is clutching tighter than a string of pearls, it refers to the Data Protection Act 1988, which was almost completely repealed with the exception of two Acts that can still rely on it. The Commissions of Investigation Act is not one of those. If the advice to which the Minister refers is the advice of the Attorney General, he is doing some serious mental gymnastics to make his case. I will quote Simon McGarr, who is probably one of the people Senator Ward is calling into question. He is the director of Data Compliance Europe. He stated: "This is deep into what might be termed 'novelty'."

The Sinn Féin amendments facilitate the Minister to do what he would ordinarily do in response to requests for personal data in the commission archive once it is sealed. It give him the "out" from the legal cul-de-sac into which he appears to have led the Government but, more fundamentally, the amendment is a final attempt to respond to the heartfelt appeals from the survivors, their families and human rights lawyers to ensure they have access to all of the documents that pertain to them. I cannot fathom what it must be like for people to know that there are documents about them, their brutal experience at the hands of these institutions and their families and lived experience, and that after everything the State has put them through, it will now put those most critical documents into a box and put them away from them. I cannot get my head around the fact that the Government would even contemplate this after everything this State has done to those women. What we are doing with this Bill is creating a situation whereby victims and survivors of forced family separation must take the State to court to access the documents about them that it is holding. That is some legacy for this Government - dragging older women through the courts.

That is not even touching on the broader issue relating to the archive, the index and the concerns of archivists regarding discrepancies in how the commission references its sources, including giving only one-line references for multi-decade tranches of files. The manner in which this Bill has been brought through the Houses has retraumatised the survivors. This is not being done by those calling on them to appeal to the legislators to listen to their voices. It has been brought about by the manner in which the Bill is being fast-tracked and in the way it is being handled in these Houses. There is no excuse for that.