Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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451. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the changes he has made to allow access by persons to their own data held by his Department and bodies under its aegis following the introduction of GDPR; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31463/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Data Protection legislation places an obligation on all organisations that hold personal identifiable data, to provide access to that information should the individual concerned seek access to same.  My Department, through its various support measures in the agri-food sector, processes significant amounts of personal data in respect of its clients.

The right to access personal information held by organisations is outlined under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation EU 679/2016, which came into effect on 25 May 2018.  Previous Data Protection legislation (namely the 1988 and 2003 Acts) also provided for access by the individual to any personal information held by an organisation.

As this right to access was already in place in my Department, the introduction of GDPR did not require large scale amendments to the processing of Subject Access Requests (SARs) received from an individual.

Subject Access Requests received by bodies under the aegis of my Department are operational matters for the bodies concerned.