Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

These amendments relate to good practice in data protection. In her engagement on the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2022, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, accepted amendments in respect of this matter and recognised the importance of ensuring appropriate data protection impact assessments at different points. It is good practice to have those. Amendment No. 77 would ensure that we remembered the importance of data protection impact assessments prior to the disclosure of personal data.

Amendment No. 78 is important because it would ensure that data provided by students under section 49, which deals with the supply of personal data, should not be used for commercial purposes. This is meant to ensure that there is no risk in commercial partnerships with universities, which have an extraordinarily large amount of data about large and important demographics, of those data being exploited for commercial purposes.

These are safety net amendments in respect of data protection. One hopes that neither would create adverse circumstances, but we are trying to copper-fasten that protection.