[ad_1]
There can be no “blanket” ban on accessing records related to the Mother and Baby Household Commission, the state’s data protection watchdog said.
The measure of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) comes after days of controversy over a Government Bill that governs the treatment of these records, collected by the housing investigation commission.
The government has said that it must seal access to the records for a period of 30 years; activists have opposed this. They maintain that the State has not explained that in the 2004 legislation, which regulates the establishment of investigation commissions, it determines that the records must be sealed.
Critics of the bill have further argued that the right to access records is determined by the broad EU data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The DPC’s intervention supports activists’ claims that access is determined by the GDPR, not by any conflicting national legislation. Irish law provides that access rights may be restricted in some circumstances, specifically if their exercise would impede the operation of commissions or future cooperation of witnesses.
Provisions of the law
However, on Friday the DPC effectively argued that access can only be limited on a case-by-case basis, and a request for access to records made under the GDPR should be evaluated on its own merits, rather than summarily rejected. He said that the provisions of the Law that allow the sealing of documents are not intended to “constitute an effective general barrier to the exercise of rights.
The regulator said that the department must demonstrate why “it would be necessary to restrict access rights” related to the commission and also that the department must ensure that by sealing the documents “they do not prevent the exercise of rights where necessary and proportionate.” . to restrict those rights is not done ”.
Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said Friday that it was no longer “morally feasible” for his department to deny survivors access to personal information. However, he has advocated a more gradual approach, saying the preference is to overcome legal issues over access to data through engagement with the Attorney General and requesting that a committee of Oireachtas examine any issues that arise.
Inherited problems
O’Gorman told the Seanad, which passed the bill on Friday, that he was “absolutely committed” to solving the problems. He apologized for his approach to dealing with the legislation and said that in his “rush to fix a legal problem” he lost sight of the fact that mother and baby homes and all the major legacy problems in the state “are not legal. problems”.
“They are some of the most serious types of abuse that could be perpetrated against women and children.”
In a statement Friday night, O’Gorman said the DPC’s comments relate to the 2004 legislation, not the current bill. He said that the legal advice received by his Department indicated that the right to access data under GDPR is “expressly prohibited” by the 2004 law, but acknowledged that “there are different legal opinions on the matter.” He said he is committed to a closer examination of the issue.
The debate over the bill has been marked by acrimony and a high-profile promotional campaign in which Oireachtas members received tens of thousands of submissions via email. Such was the scale of the communications that the email infrastructure in the Oireachtas suffered, with delays in sending and receiving emails last week.
[ad_2]