Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Seanad. This is not his first time to be here since we have been open, engaged and in this term but it is my first time to address him. I begin by thanking him most sincerely for the exceptional work he has carried out on behalf of our country over the last term and this term in bringing us to this point. We are in his safe hands in terms of leadership on this issue.

I want to address two areas. My colleagues here have been very eloquent in their needs and talked about imports and exports. The first basic area I wish to mention is British citizens living in Ireland who may have been here for a long time, been taxpayers in Ireland and have no Irish antecedents. At this point in order for them to get an EU passport they are exposed to considerable expense. I have had quotes from people in the constituency of Dublin South-Central that when they applied for citizenship but do not have an Irish parent or grandparent there has been a follow-up charge of €950, which seems disproportionate. If they merely travel or holiday within the EU they must use different channels separate from their families. I know this is a basic matter in the grand scale of all the things the Minister must deal with, but it affects some people who live in and have contributed to communities for a very long time. I ask him to examine the matter.

My main point concerns the considerable expense that businesses will be exposed to in the context of data and compliance with the general data protection regulation, GDPR. I have always been of the view that the Information Commissioner's Office, ICO, in the UK is a fantastic data commission, fantastic overseer of data compliance and certainly, along with our own Data Protection Commission, would have been standard setters across the European Union and quite influential in our compliance with GDPR. It is a personal sadness for me that the ICO will now be out of it among all of the other things that we need to think of. While it has been said that there will be onward adherence, at this moment in time we do not have an adequacy decision by the European Data Protection Board in terms of what happens in the UK afterwards in the absence of an agreement or deal. So the only thing that we can assume, come 1 January and afterwards, is that we will be reliant on either binding corporate rules or, which is much more likely, the standard contractual clauses as we become data exporters.

Many of the businesses in Ireland are inextricably linked with UK businesses. Many of the recruitment agencies in Ireland are reliant on using Bullhorn software as a method to manage their data records. That is a UK company, is UK overseen as well as being American. At this moment in time, our businesses face into dealing with Brexit but also dealing with the aftermath of the Schrems decision. I am consulting the European Data Protection Board about ways to put in a system and regime that businesses must apply on a case-by-case basis for every data process. It would mean that businesses for every client, service and supplier must on a case-by-case basis data map and verify what data transfer tool will be required. They must also consider accessing the law and practice in the country to which they export data. They are also obliged to consider the future departures from law or compliance with European law in that country. All of that work is fine for a big company that has an inhouse legal practice or advisers but many small companies do not have that luxury. The hidden cost for onward compliance can very easily be overlooked with all of the other things that we must deal with at the moment and that is certainly of concern.

The Data Protection Commission has been very good and supplied standard contractual clauses to assist data transfer and data export. However, we must bear in mind that there are now additional obligations on companies that will arise if we have a no-deal Brexit and because of the Schrems decision. We have provided so much support and information to businesses but this is a last minute issue that businesses must be aware of. Everything else appears to be in hand, as my colleagues have said, for which I thank the Minister.