MEPs conclude data protection -themed visit to Ireland
During their three-day visit, MEPs discussed data protection issues with politicians, Data Protection Commission officials, technology companies and experts.
A delegation of MEPs from the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs has spent the last three days in Ireland as part of their work to examine the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforcement of this regulation, including the functioning of the so called "one-stop-shop" mechanism, and the operation of the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).
In the course of the visit, they met with the Minister for Justice, Ms Helen McEntee TD; the Data Protection Commissioner, Ms Helen Dixon; the Oireachtas Justice committee; and a number of stakeholders such as Meta, TikTok and Microsoft, as well as representatives of NGOs, privacy lawyers and academia.
After the visit, Maite Pagazaurtundúa (Renew, ES - Head of Delegation and LIBE Vice-Chair) said: “We’ve had a number of extremely worthwhile and insightful exchanges. At the same time we remain concerned by the Irish data protection authority being a bottleneck of the one-stop-shop mechanism. In this context, we are convinced that an independent review of DPC’s procedures and actions would be helpful. We support a number of recommendations endorsed by the Joint Committee on Justice of the Houses of the Oireachtas in their report on the GDPR enforcement in Ireland. Addressing these issues is essential for protection of personal data, and by extension the fundamental rights, of hundreds of millions of EU citizens.”
Along with Ms Pagazaurtundúa, the delegation also included Birgit Sippel (S&D, DE); Paul Tang (S&D, NL); Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield (Greens/EFA, FR); and Clare Daly (the Left, IE).
Contacts:
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Janne OJAMO
Press Officer -
Fionnuala CROKER
Press Officer in Ireland