Written answers

Tuesday, 12 February 2019

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Election Monitoring Missions

Photo of Seán HaugheySeán Haughey (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail)
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138. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the name and age of each observer appointed to the 2018 election observer roster; the county each lives in; if they were members of the previous roster; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6829/19]

Photo of Ciarán CannonCiarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade maintains and administers a roster of suitably skilled individuals who are available to participate in election observation missions overseas, organised in the main by the EU and the OSCE. A new roster was put in place in January 2019. This followed a Call for Volunteers which issued in July 2018.

Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Department cannot disclose the personal data of any member of the election observation roster without their specific, informed, unambiguous and freely-given consent. There is of course a public interest in disclosing the names of roster members. For this reason, as roster members are being trained, the Department is seeking the consent of individual roster members to allow us to disclose the list of names of the new roster by way of a response to a Parliamentary Question. This process is ongoing.

Data regarding the age or place of residence of members of the new roster has not been captured for statistical analysis. For insurance purposes, as roster members complete security vetting the Department will be capturing the age profile of the new roster. When this process is complete, the Department will consider the information which can be provided regarding the demographics of the new roster, subject of course to the GDPR. While security vetting is on-going, based on the shortlisted candidates, slightly more than half of the new roster were not members of the last roster. With almost twice as many applications to available roster places, the intense competition will ensure that the quality of Ireland's election observation nominations remains high.

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