Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, want to thank Senator O’Donovan for bringing up epilepsy this week. I have a very close family member who had a late life experience, just as Senator O’Donovan had, and I can assure the House that it is a very scary experience to see a loved one going off in the back of an ambulance without knowing what has happened.

I raise two issues with the Deputy Leader today. The first one is the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and the problem that some local authority members are having in going about their day-to-day business in trying to help as many of their own constituents as they can. I am aware that this issue has also been affecting the work that many of us are trying to carry out in this House on a daily basis, which is the need for compliance with section 40 of the Data Protection Act 2018. In my local authority, a form must now be signed by the person on whose behalf one is making the representation and countersigned by the local authority member. Simply put, the local authority will not deal with the member unless this form is signed. The problem, of course, is that we are in the middle of a pandemic and getting such forms signed is difficult, to say the least, for so many public representatives.

A bigger issue is that the need for such forms differs all over the country, even though all of our public representatives, including Members of this House, are trying to achieve the very best for the persons we are representing. It was always my understanding that we, as public representatives, must ensure that we keep the data that is provided to us safely and only use them for the purposes of making the representation. We must standardise this requirement to ensure that all of our public representatives can do their jobs on a daily basis. We all know that in dealing with various Departments, one must have a level of personal information in order to make a representation but calling to houses to have forms filled in is putting an additional step into a process that is not needed. I ask the Deputy Leader to invite the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to the House to discuss this matter.

I thank the Deputy Leader and the Leader of the House for facilitating the important debate this House had on the terrible and totally unacceptable events in Palestine with the Minister for Foreign Affairs last week. However, to facilitate that much-needed debate, we had to postpone our statements on the Defence Forces. I join with my colleagues in asking a number of questions on the Defence Forces, given, as my colleague has said, what we have learned over the weekend about the Naval Service and Tadhg McCarthy in the report in the Irish Examiner, where senior naval officers are quoted as stating "the concerning and continuing fall in [personnel] numbers" in the service is "hampering best efforts to provide the expected level of service to key stakeholders, and indeed the State". I ask the Deputy Leader to convene the debate with the Minister for Defence as urgently as she can. Numbers are falling in all parts of the Defence Forces and this cannot continue. We have seen the key role that the Defence Forces are playing and can play in the recent cyberattack on this country but if the recruitment and retention crisis continues, then there is a growing fear that the Defence Forces will no longer be able to carry out many of the vital and underestimated tasks they undertake.There is a pay and condition crisis in the Defence Forces. Waiting on the outcome of the Commission on the Defence Forces or the setting up of an independent pay commission may be too late. Time is running out. Many Senators will appreciate the Leader's support, as always, in facilitating such a debate.