Greetings from Dublin!

Always a pleasure to be back in Dublin and spend time with the IAPP community here. Ireland is very much in the Christmas spirit, taken the time of year, and you sense folks are looking forward to the festive season that is soon upon us; the town is particularly lively.

I have had some interesting meetings here over the last days, in particular with some of our members, as well as our Dublin KNet chairs looking ahead to IAPP activity for 2017. I can sense that the GDPR implementation is very much top of the agenda as the countdown to its application becomes an ever-increasing reality; there is a real sense that organizations are gearing up and looking to get their operations GDPR ready.

If you will recall, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Věra Jourová recently visited Dublin for meetings with the Irish authorities stating that Ireland is set to become a key country in Europe over the coming years in protecting the data of EU citizens. It is still a fairly significant fact that Ireland currently hosts international HQs — for operations outside of North America — for nine out of the top 10 tech firms in the world and, as such, regulatory related matters and potential breaches to their systems would have to be reported to Commissioner Dixon's office, making the Irish regulator one of the most important and potentially influential watchdogs in the EU.

This week the Irish DPA has been in training for its growing operations here in Dublin; Antonis Patrikios, partner at the law firm Fieldfisher in London, as well as a seasoned trainer for IAPP, delivered a two-day CIPP/E training to a full house at the Department of Justice training facilities. By all accounts, and through my conversations with the DPA staff on the ground, the training was well received. The Irish DPA has been expanding its operations with a concerted recruitment effort of late. At the IAPP we are delighted to be providing the CIPP/E training this week.

I also had the opportunity to meet with the Irish government data protection services attached to the Prime Minister’s office to get a sense of how the public sector is preparing for the GDPR. This week, the government hosted an event for Irish state and semi-state agencies on GDPR preparedness as the public sector here in Ireland prepares for life under the new regime. Clearly, the mandatory DPO requirement was a key theme for the event as the Irish public sector looks to fulfill the requirement across the sector. Moreover, Dara Murphy, the Irish Minister of State for data protection, and the Irish government in general, are looking to host an international data protection event here in Dublin in 2017, most likely in June as I understand it — so that is something to keep an eye out for once it is confirmed; it promises to be a significant event on the privacy calendar for 2017.