1 Legal and enforcement framework
1.1 Which legislative and regulatory provisions govern data privacy in your jurisdiction?
Since 25 May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) (GDPR) is the main legal framework for data protection in all countries within the European Economic Area, which includes EU member states, Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein.
In Ireland, the national law that gives further effect to the GDPR is the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018), which entered into force on the same day as the GDPR. The DPA 2018, in addition, transposed the EU Law Enforcement Directive (2016/680) (LED) into Irish law and provided for the necessary amendments to the previous data protection framework, established under the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 (DPA 1988). In fact, despite being largely repealed by the DPA 2018, the DPA 1988 still applies in the cases set out in Section 8 of the DPA 2018. These include complaints made, investigations initiated but not
