Cantillon: can EU data privacy be guarded for €5m?

From a budget allocation of less than €1.5 million in 2010 following the financial downturn, the Data Protection Commissioner's office has this year been handed more than three times that. On Thursday, Minister for Data Protection Dara Murphy announced additional funding of €1.2 million for the office, on top of the €3.65 million already allocated.

It's no coincidence that this comes shortly after the key ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems case, which struck down the Safe Harbour arrangement relied upon by Irish-based tech multinationals and other organisations as a legal basis to transfer citizens' personal data to the United States.

So, is €4.7 million enough to resource an independent regulator responsible for protecting the fundamental privacy rights of not just Irish citizens but those of hundreds of millions of EU citizens?

According to the office, the initial doubling of funding this year facilitated the recruitment of 15 new staff, bringing the total number in Dublin and Portarlington to 42. For context, the Financial Regulator had more than 340 staff at the end of 2007, just before the crash. Comreg, which has national responsibility for regulating the communications sector, employed more than 120 staff in 2012 at a cost of nearly €10 million and spent more than €2.5 million on legal expenses.

Back in Portarlington, the DPC’s senior investigators notably had to teach themselves how to take prosecutions in the lower courts to minimise legal costs.

The office welcomed the allocation of the additional €1.2 million in light of the new EU data protection framework to be agreed in the coming months.

It said the funding would allow for continued recruitment “based on the needs of the office”.

The responsibilities of the Irish DPC are now simply huge. It’s hard to see how a budget of less than €5 million could yet be anywhere near enough.