Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I take it the Deputy is referring to the Data Protection Commissioner’s successful prosecution of a firm of private investigators, MCK Rentals Limited, which recently resulted in convictions against the firm and both of its directors. I congratulate the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner on this successful and important prosecution. The firm illegally obtained customers’ personal data from a staff member of the Department and it is my understanding that information relating to customer addresses solicited by the private investigations firm was passed on to credit unions. I am very concerned at the behaviour of credit unions in these cases.

I have been informed that the private investigators were extremely adept at duping officials in the Department. They displayed a high degree of professionalism and training in duping techniques. They already had customers' personal information, such as dates of birth and PPS numbers. Departmental staff members require such personal information to ascertain whether telephone inquiries are from genuine sources.

The Department and I regret the understandable concern caused to the Department's customers by the illegal activities of these private investigators. We fully assisted the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. I stress that the Department treats data protection with complete and total seriousness. As Deputies are aware, the Department deals with a substantial number of legitimate data requests every working day. In 2013, it dealt with well over 1.8 million telephone calls involving queries across the range of schemes provided by the Department. That equates to almost 35,000 telephone calls per week. The particular people involved in this case seem to have been extraordinarily adept at pretending. They had access to the basic information that is always used when checking whether an inquirer is a legitimate inquirer. Obviously, they gained access through that. I was deeply disappointed to hear it is apparent that the clients on behalf of which they were doing this were credit unions. I understand from some media comment that not all of the credit unions may have been aware that they were giving, or were able to supply, some of this information.

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