Rosslare councillors far from convinced by portal’s merits
GENERAL Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) may have been enshrined in Irish law since 2018 but for the councillors of the Rosslare Municipal District (RMD) they remain a thorny issue.
At this month’s meeting of the RMD, councillors were instructed on how to use the Wexford County Council (WCC) members portal when submitting Section 40 representations.
A Section 40 representation occurs when an elected councillor makes ‘representations on behalf of an individual which involves the processing of personal data’, for example when enquiring about a housing issue.
Explaining how the portal works, Amanda Byrne and Anita McLoughlin from WCC said councillors could forward their requests to the relevant department digitally, allowing them to have a record of all correspondence while ensuring they complied with GDPR.
However, Independent Councillor Ger Carthy was unmoved by the portal’s potential merits.
‘This is bureaucracy gone wrong completely,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t suit elected members, it doesn’t suit me for one. I do a massive amount of my representations through phone conversations with the appropriate people.
‘This is an unbelievable load of bureaucracy, paperwork, just to adhere to whatever side of the GDPR legislation we see fit to implement. It’s going to hamstring members as to how they do their business, if you go in on the portal you might hear back from an official in a week, and you may not.
‘I do my work in real time, that means when I ask a question I get an answer back in a reasonable timeframe.’
But Ms Byrne said the implementation of the portal was long overdue and encouraged councillors to embrace the technology.
‘The portal itself is a work in progress, we would very strongly believe it’s the most effective way for you to make your requests and do it in a way that’s legally compliant.
‘We’re probably the last Local Authority in Ireland to bring this in, so I certainly wouldn’t be in favour of waiting any longer. We can organise further training if you wish.
‘We want this to work for you, get to the stage where it’s like online banking. We would like a member of the RMD to be part of the working group to help further develop the portal.
‘It’s not about limiting your engagement with staff or preventing you from talking to people, it’s about finding a way to do it while being legally compliant, it protects yourselves, us and our staff,’ she said.
Her colleague, Ms McLoughlin, was equally resolute.
‘In order for us to ensure we can give out personal data we have to be sure that you have the consent of the person. It’s the data protection laws, we didn’t bring them in, but if you’re representing people and suddenly they say “no, he’s not representing me” and there’s no record of it we could end up in trouble.
‘Times are changing and this is the way to make sure we’re all compliant,’ she added.
For Cllr Lisa McDonald the portal appeared to be another way of making officials inaccessible to councillors.
‘The portal is a way of limiting contact with councillors,’ she said. ‘It is predominately housing, maybe planning, two areas where this will be needed.
‘I agree it does protect the data holder, and as data holders we need that and I do think the application of data protection is important but we need to get the balance. I did use it initially, but the difficulty is you get the bog standard response and that’s not the nitty gritty, often things need to be heard orally. That’s why I stopped using it.
‘My strong view is that officials don’t want to deal with councillors, they want councillors to become part of the system instead of challenging the system, the interface with councillors is being eroded.’
Noting that the council were searching for ‘guinea pigs’ to receive training on how to use the portal, Cllr Jim Moore willingly offered up his services.
‘I have no problem getting training,’ he said. ‘We used to get reports on the numbers using the portal and it was embarrassingly low. We need to be GDPR compliant, but this portal needs to be resold to councillors.’