Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government speaks on the aim of modernising Ireland's visa and residency system. The Minister for Justice and Equality has said he will not comment on individual applications. That is very well but I want to raise with him a report from two days ago on a statement that the Chinese mother of a nine year old boy obtained an Irish passport for him under false pretences. How did this information come to be in the possession of that journalist and newspaper? Surely information of this kind would have been contained in a Department of Justice and Equality or Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, INIS, file. How else would it have been received by a journalist? Potentially, this seems to be a very serious data breach. If it is a data breach it suggests officials at the Department of Justice and Equality were briefing against a nine year old. I want the Minister to state whether the information came from the Department or INIS and, if so, will he instigate an investigation as to how it came into the public domain?

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