Sinn Féin intends to keep information on the voting intentions of individuals on their controversial Abú database for up to 10 years, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
Senior Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin took questions on the database from members of the committee amid criticism that the party did not send their general secretary to the meeting.
Senior officials from the other main parties attended the meeting which was held as part of pre-legislative scrutiny of the Electoral Reform Bill.
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) is to conduct an audit of how all political parties hold data on voters. Deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed the audit in a statement on Thursday. “I can confirm that we have written to all political parties to announce that we will be conducting a data protection audit of each political party in the State, ” he said.
It comes after questions were raised about Sinn Féin’s Abú system.
Sinn Féin has denied mining social media for information on voters to add to the database as is suggested in what Mr Ó Broin has described as a badly worded training manual. He repeated those assertions on Thursday.
However, the party does add an assessment of voting intentions which Mr Ó Broin suggested is similar to practices by other parties.
He said the party does not use the electoral register for anything other than electoral purposes but uses it alongside door-to-door canvassing to identify their vote and to get supporters out on polling day.
He said it was a “really important tool whether you do it with a paper and pen and you hold the information in a biscuit tin” or “whether you have a centrally provided facility as we do”.
The other political parties say they have no similar central databases that record voter intention.
Sinn Féin did not have a registered data protection officer (DPO) in place nor had it made a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) when Abú was set up in 2019.
Mr Ó Broin said the party always had an unregistered data protection compliance officer but said these issues were oversights that were rectified in recent weeks.
Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe challenged Mr Ó Broin on the combining of the elector register, which has the names and addresses of people who have signed up to vote, with the marked register which records if they voted in the last election and how Sinn Féin holds this centrally for more than one constituency.
Mr Ó Broin insisted the information was “tightly controlled” in terms of who has access.
Mr McAuliffe said he believes combining the registers without a DPO or DPIA is a breach of data protection law and said the data “should be deleted”.
Fine Gael Senator Mary Seery-Kearney asked if a Sinn Féin DPIA covers the use of both electoral registers in the Abú system.
Mr Ó Broin said Sinn Féin believed all of the information on Abú was “fully compliant” with the Data Protection Act 2018.
He added: “As you know the Data Protection Commissioner is engaging extensively with our party at present.
“And if that office has any concerns that office will let us know and we will address those.”
Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan asked how long Sinn Féin was storing canvass information on voter intentions on its database.
Mr Ó Broin said this was “simple information” on whether people intend to vote for Sinn Féin and it is kept for “two electoral cycles” or 10 years.
Mr O’Callaghan asked representatives of other parties if their candidates hold information on the voting intention of individual voters.
Fianna Fáil assistant general secretary Darragh McShea, Fine Gael general secretary John Carroll and Green Party general secretary Maura Rose McMahon said their individual public representatives would hold such information but they are given training on data protection.
Social Democrats general secretary Brian Sheehan said its candidates did not collect individuals’ voting intentions but do compile aggregate information not linked to a person’s details.
He said: “I’m not quite sure that voters would like the idea that political parties are storing their voting intentions expressed in a conversation at the door.
“We don’t retain that and any aggregated information is not retained after the elections.”
Mr Ó Broin argued that “one of the problems of not having the kind of system that Sinn Féin has developed” is that other parties “can’t actually confirm whether or not all of their individual candidates are fully compliant”.
He claimed data protection compliance is “much easier for us to manage”.
Fine Gael Senator John Cummins joined others in criticising Sinn Féin’s decision to have Mr Ó Broin represent them rather than the party’s acting general secretary Ken O’Connell claiming it was an “affront” to the committee.
Mr Ó Broin said the invitation said that the general secretary could nominate someone to attend. He said he was a member of the party leadership though confirmed he was not on the Ard Comhairle.
Mr Cummins asked him to outline the cost of the Abú system and whether its development had been funded with money from the US or Northern Ireland.
Mr Ó Broin said he would provide the committee with the cost in writing and insisted it was funded by Sinn Féin in the South.
