The European Commission has defended its monitoring of data protection rules in Ireland.
The Commission was replying to a request for more information from the EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly.
She launched an investigation in February following a complaint to her office from Dr Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
He had expressed concerns about the Commission's monitoring of Ireland's application of data protection rules.
In June, the Commission issued a reply to the Ombudsman describing as 'unfounded' claims that it does not collect sufficient information to monitor Ireland's application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The Ombudsman requested additional information about how the European Commission informs itself of the application of data protection rules by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).
"The Commission has requested information from the DPC and receives, on a confidential basis and roughly every two months, an overview of the large-scale statutory inquiries," the Commission wrote in its reply.
"The Commission considers that this is a detailed overview of the state-of-play of the on-going individual investigations, allowing to understand their content and to measure the procedural steps at national level," the Commission added.
The Ombudsman's office says it will now study the response before deciding on the next steps in the investigation.
