Ireland’s data protection chief says ‘we can’t be doing enough’ to protect children online

There can never be enough data regulation when it comes to keeping children safe online, Ireland’s top data protection official told Euronews Next at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon.

Des Hogan, commissioner and chair of the three-person Data Protection Commission (DPC), said on Thursday that child protection is one of the government office’s chief concerns.

“We can’t be doing enough, and we have to think about children and particularly children in vulnerable situations. This is now their playground, and this is now their workplace, and this is now their night club,” he said.

Ireland is in a key position when it comes to enforcing data privacy rules on Big Tech. The country hosts the European headquarters of some of the biggest companies, including Meta, Apple, and TikTok.

Conflict of interest?

However, Ireland’s DPC came under fire after the appointment of Niamh Sweeney, an ex-Meta lobbyist, last month.

Asked if it was a conflict of interest, Hogan replied that he did not think so as Sweeney had held other roles, including journalist and government advisor to Ireland’s deputy prime minister. Hogan also said that the application process was independent.

But he added that Sweeney would absent herself from any decisions surrounding Meta and Stripe, where she also previously held a position.

“To be clear, I’m very happy to have Niamh on board,” he said.

How online safety has changed

The DPC is Ireland’s supervisory authority for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a key European Union privacy and security law.

Hogan pointed to several changes in online safety, notably that children’s data was made public by default. However, following DPC inquiries, changes have been made.

“All those cases are being appealed, but the responsible companies will always try to follow the corrective measures which me and other regulators impose,” he said.

Regulating artificial intelligence (AI) has also been a focus of the DPC, which Hogan says has been a challenge for tech companies as well as regulators.

There have been some conflicts, for example between the DPC and companies such as Meta and the social media platform X, after it refused to pause the data the AI models were using for training.

But overarching EU rules that came into force this year have harmonised rules for data that is used for training AI across the bloc.

“If you’re going to use personal data, you need to find a way to anonymise it or pseudo-anonymise it, to clean it. The washing machine analogy – so that the personal data doesn’t follow through, and that is the concern, I suppose, of the privacy regulators,” Hogan said.

While tech companies often warn that overregulation could stifle innovation, Hogan believes it can be done right to serve both the companies and public well.

“I think the key issues are going to be around trust, and we really need industry to play its role. If we’re interested in values, we will accept the proposition that we need proper ethical guardrails on new products and services,” he said.

Hogan said he believes that autonomy and control will be key priorities in the future, both in terms of the individual and whether their digital pasts follow them later in life.

“I suppose it’s labels, which will allow me to flourish, or hold me back. So again, it goes back to human dignity and I think there’s a real opportunity for us to get it right”.