Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As seconder of the amendments, I will not reiterate all of the points that have been made. This discussion began when we were debating the Data Protection Act 2018 in the previous Seanad and that discussion has followed through to this debate. This is an issue of very serious concern to all of us in our group and we have engaged very actively on it, including in respect of the debates on the transposition of the audiovisual media services directive, the digital services directive and the AI directive. All of these issues are fundamental to society and to civil liberties.

I support and commend my colleague's amendments. She has articulated proposals that would properly apply the brakes to our moving ahead in areas such as the use of facial recognition technology, including on personal devices. We need to think ahead and plan for the future. We must look to how facial recognition technology has been used in China and the UK, for example, and some of the laws in regard to public assembly that have been brought forward in the UK. The provision we put in place for surveillance architecture is extremely important generally, no matter its particular purpose in a specific instance.

I note amendment No. 64 seeks to create a penalty for incredibly large-scale dumping of certain goods. However, the dumping of comparatively smaller amounts of goods is being used to justify quite extreme measures in terms of potential surveillance. My colleague's amendments rightly look to apply the brakes in this regard but she has also offered compromise amendments that would at least seek to insert transparency safeguards. For instance, given there is a requirement for necessity and proportionality in any use of personal data, she is seeking to ensure we make decisions as to whether a measure is proportional or necessary based on how it has been used in the year or two previously, before it is renewed. These are immensely detailed and forensic amendments. I strongly urge the Minister of State to engage with them. I really regret that we do not have the opportunity to go back and forth on them properly and tease them out. They relate to very significant issues with very significant implications.