Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes has said his office could not be responsible for regulating the activities of many major multinational companies all over Europe without additional resources.*

His office would become the hub, or designated supervisory authority for the activities of such companies, under a new EU regulation likely to come into force within the next three years.

Speaking at the annual data protection conference of the Irish Computer Society in Dublin yesterday, Mr Hawkes noted the audit his office carried out on Facebook last year. The European headquarters of the company is in Dublin and the audit drew substantially on the commissioner’s resources last year, he said. The office runs on less than € 1.5 million a year, with 22 staff.

* This article was amended on February 10th, 2012 to correct an error. The error occurred in the editing process.