Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Is the Minister saying the disaster in the UK, when 25 million sets of information were transferred between the inland revenue and the work and pension sector, could not happen here? The Minister referred to the data protection section. Have the Minister and her predecessor thoroughly reviewed the procedures in that section in light of the number of cases of improper accessing of data?

Two years ago, it was alleged that 72 officials accessed the data of the winner of a large prize in the Euromillions. Every few months we get a disturbing instance of this. In October 2007 someone was prosecuted for accessing the records of 40 individuals. A recent report includes a serious allegation that an official improperly accessed information and passed it on to people engaged in criminality. Has the data protection unit been reviewed and have its procedures been assessed in light of these disturbing reports on personal information?

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