174. The Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act 1990 is amended by the insertion of the following section after section 16:

“Provision of information by Commissioner to Minister

16A. (1) The Minister may request the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána to provide any information necessary for the performance of the Minister’s functions under sections 9C and 9E and the Commissioner shall, notwithstanding anything contained in any other enactment or rule of law, but subject to the Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, comply with that request.

(2) In this section ‘Data Protection Regulation’ means Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016¹⁶ on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).”.