Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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362. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the funding the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner received in 2020; and the amount it is expected to receive in 2021, in tabular form. [34142/21]

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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363. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the estimated cost of increasing the funding for the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner by 5%, 10%, 20% and 50%, in tabular form. [34143/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 362 and 363 together.

The Government is committed to supporting the ongoing roll-out and delivery of the Data Protection Commission's national and international responsibilities. There has been a continued year-on-year increase in funding for the Commission over the last four budgetary years to reflect this commitment.

The Commission has received an allocation of €19.1 million in funding under Budget 2021. This represents a 13% increase on the €16.9 million that was allocated for 2020 and a more than five-fold increase from its 2015 allocation of €3.647m, in line with its increased functions.

Against this background of successive increases in budget allocation in recent years significant underspends by the Commission have occurred. These underspends have been €4.7 million in 2020, €4.8 million in 2019 and €3.6 million in 2018.

Staffing numbers in the DPC have also increased from 110 at the end of 2018, to 150 by the end of last year. Through ongoing recruitment, the DPC is expected to fill an additional 30 posts by the end of Q2 2021.

The additional statistical information requested by the Deputy can be found in the attached tables.