Mr. Barry Lowry:

Each organisation will have procedures in place with regard to ensuring that only the appropriate people within that organisation are entitled to see certain pieces of information. I am not well placed to talk about a local authority specifically but so will use the example of the Department of Social Protection. That Department has had procedures in place for many years to ensure that people cannot browse welfare records just to see what their neighbours, friends or relatives are getting and there are very clear disciplinary rules and regulations that underpin that. The State has had those in place for some time and they will continue to be there and will be enhanced. That provides a level of assurance but the Senator is quite right, in that errors do happen and they are invariably human errors. There has been a lot of investment made in training and so on to ensure that people are aware, as State employees, of their individual obligations under the Act, of what they are supposed to do and what they are absolutely not supposed to do.