Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. One of our concerns must be to ensure continuing confidence in the blood bank so that people do not withhold donating blood as a result of this. It is ironic that the IBTS set out to seek help in securing the information only to end up with somebody walking around with it on a laptop on a street in New York where it ended up being stolen. There is something incredibly sloppy about that.

I refer to the second part of my question. Unfortunately, this incident is not a one off, as there have been other thefts of computer equipment, disks and so on from Departments. Deputy Shortall tabled questions to the Department of Social and Family Affairs about the unauthorised accessing of personal information by staff. One prominent case occurred in recent times. Will the Taoiseach ask the Data Protection Commissioner to undertake a full review of the security arrangements surrounding personal information supplied to Departments, which is held electronically? There is a necessity to restore people's confidence that the information they are supplying to Departments will not be accessed, lost or carried around on a disk or a laptop by staff of an agency on the streets of Dublin or New York and that the dangers of personal information getting into the hands of criminals or others and the dangers associated with identity theft will be minimised. Serious attention needs to be given to this issue and the way to proceed is to ask the Data Protection Commissioner, in the first instance, to conduct a full audit of security measures, make a report and for the Government to take whatever necessary action needs to be taken to increase security and to protect people's identities.

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