Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter which is generating a lot of interest. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Damien English, for taking this matter.

I will outline and confirm my support for the development of a centralised information system for primary schools. However, serious concerns have been raised about the Minister's heavy-handed implementation of the primary schools online database or POD system. She has done little thus far to allay the concerns of parents over the security of sensitive information relating to their children. Some serious issues have been raised by parents and the wider public that their data protection rights and legal protections are being ignored by the Minister.

Is it the Minister's intention to threaten to decrease the capitation grant for schools or increase the pupil-teacher ratio for schools where parents have made the decision not to allow their children's details to be included in the primary online database system? For example, if a small primary school has 20 students and the parents of two students did not allow the information to be provided, would that school lose a teacher as a result?

Serious issues have been raised with regard to the level of security of the database. The Minister has tried to allay any data security concerns by stating that data collected by POD will be encrypted on a central system, with access restricted to approved officials in the Department of Education and Skills. However, the Minister has not addressed issues over the security of individual schools' own computer systems. Since schools will have to collect the data and transfer it to the POD system in the Department, children's details may be kept on unsecured and unencrypted computers in schools. Can the Minister give a guarantee as to who will have access to this highly sensitive data on our children?

We are told that the collection process is secure due to a step-by-step system of transferring the data from schools' computers to the Department. How realistic is the proposed system? The Department expects school staff to transfer this highly sensitive data to the Department of Education using a 17-step process so complex that it has been dubbed by principals as near unusable.

It is questionable whether the POD system is in compliance with the Data Protection Act and unclear whether the Data Protection Commissioner has approved the system. We are told that the Department intends to gather sensitive, private data on all primary school students in the country, to include their racial profile, psychological assessments, special needs, religion, and PPS number and that this information will be stored until the children concerned are at least 30 years of age. I question why that needs to be the case.

The Minister has stated that the Data Protection Commissioner has agreed to the data retention policy. I refer to recent remarks by the commissioner: "[I]t seems to be the case that there's an inadequate explanation of why they need it and why they need to hold it for as long as they are holding it." Has the decision on the retention of this data been made in consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner? Has the commissioner given express approval for the retention of all the details being collected? Is he aware of the Department's circular on this matter?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for giving us the opportunity to discuss it and to deal with some of his concerns. I agree that parents are concerned. There is misinformation and exaggeration associated with this issue.

It has long been recognised that there is a need for individualised pupil information to be collected at primary level to fulfil our requirements as a Department to ensure that every child of compulsory school age in the State is in receipt of an education and to allow us to monitor the progress of pupils through the system in order that we can develop an evidence-based educational policy. Such a system has been called for from sources as varied as schools, the National Parents' Council, school management bodies and unions, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the National Economic and Social Forum, the Central Statistics Office, and groups and charities working for children. The current system of record-keeping and data collection means that information provided to the Department from primary schools is quite often out of date by the time it is eventually processed and passed to areas that need it such as the inspectorate, school governance, forward planning and various grant payment and teacher allocations.

The proposed primary online database will allow the Department to have access to timely and relevant information about the stocks and flows of pupils in our primary schools. This will aid us tremendously in carrying out our functions and providing the best possible service to schools and pupils. Moving to an electronic system will also help to streamline administration at school level and to reduce form filling, red tape, and the duplication of information requests, thus allowing school staff to focus more on their primary objectives of educating our children. Individualised student databases are now commonplace across the Irish education system, as well as in other countries. Individualised data coverage is already in place at pre-primary, post-primary and third level education and a system is currently being developed to cover the further education sector.

I understand that people have concerns about the confidentiality of their children's data. From the point of view of data security, this data will be accessible only by a small number of people in the Department and it is stored securely on a server protected by Government firewalls.

The Deputy has raised genuine issues relating to the secure storage of the data in schools. I will revert to the Deputy with further information to allay any fears. The current retention policy for the primary online database, POD, data is for records to be maintained up to a pupil's 30th birthday. In future, schools will no longer be required to keep the official pupil registration book in paper format. Therefore, POD will be the official register of pupils in schools and the data will be retained to allow pupils to obtain their official enrolment records in the future, should they require them for any reason. The Department will continue to review its retention policy for pupil data in consultation with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. Discussions are continuing with the Data Protection Commissioner. The Deputy asked if the Data Protection Commissioner is aware of this policy and I believe he is. There is ongoing engagement with his office on the implementation of this policy.

The Department's retention policy is for audit and accounting purposes as pupils' data will be used in the allocation of teaching posts and funding to schools.

The policy also serves to trace retention trends in the education system and is important for longitudinal research and policy formation as well as being an important statistical indicator nationally and internationally. Aggregate and not individual data is used for the majority of these purposes.

The Department takes confidentiality very seriously and the pupil data are stored securely in the Department's Oracle database. This database is hosted on the Department servers, which are located in the Revenue Commissioners' data centre on St. John's Road. Access to the server is protected by Revenue and Government firewalls. Staff of the Revenue Commissioners do not have access to the data on the database. The primary online database, POD, application roles developed limit school staff to viewing and maintaining their own pupil records. Access within the Department to POD data is limited to the POD team, which numbers fewer than 15 people. No agency or other Department will have direct access to the primary online database.

It is important that people realise the information is to be of use to plan services. I listened to much of the debate about the restoration of PPS numbers and the debacle with Irish Water. Every Deputy knows that every day of the week we use PPS numbers in our offices. The first thing people who come to our offices do is give us their PPS number to help us do our work. As practitioners we use PPS numbers every day of the week, but some people in the House use every occasion to stir up people's emotions about the use of PPS numbers. Go into any Deputy's office and I guarantee that the first thing one will be asked for is one's PPS number. It is like one's address in some ways. It is one's identification number for access to information which people use in all Departments. We must be secure, and data protection issues are very important, but the hysteria generated about the use of PPS numbers is hard to take from some Deputies who use the information themselves every day. I have no problem with other issues of concern, and Deputy McConalogue is raising genuine concerns which need to be dealt with and explained. I wanted to address the PPS number issue because it is exaggerated by people in the House who know well how they are used.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I am supportive of a database being developed for the primary school system, similar to what is already in place for the secondary school system. However, genuine concerns have been expressed to me by parents and teachers, in particular school principals who are responsible for overseeing the collection of this data at primary level. This is why I have asked the questions today seeking reassurance. There has not been clarity from the Department on the development of the database or in the information being provided to schools and parents on the information being sought. I do not find in the answers which have been provided today the full reassurance I was hoping would come from having asked the question. The Minister of State has undertaken to come back to me on how this information would be retained in schools internally on their own computer systems. This is very important and I ask that the Minister of State does come back to me with further information on this. I also asked the Minister of State why this information will have to be kept until the student is 30 years of age. I did not receive a response today on why this is necessary. I do not see it myself, which is why I am asking for an explanation. We deserve this.

I am being asked whether schools will be penalised if they are not in a position to provide the information requested for the database because parents refuse to give it. As I outlined earlier, the information involved is quite sensitive. The Minister of State mentioned PPS numbers. There is also information on students' special needs, psychological assessments of students and students' racial profile, background and religion. People are increasingly concerned about how their data are kept. I would like answers on why the data must be kept for so long. Principals have been asking me what happens when a family refuses to give the information. Will the school be penalised with regard to capitation or the inclusion of the pupil in the calculation of the pupil-teacher ratio?

With regard to the financial support given to schools for this very onerous administration task being asked of them, I understand that €1.50 per pupil is allocated. This simply does not match the level of work and effort which already overstretched and financially burdened schools must undertake to collect this information. Will the Minister of State confirm the level of subsidy being given to a school? Is it €1.50? If so, how on earth was this calculation made and will the Minister of State revisit it?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy has raised several issues and I have undertaken to come back to him with information on those which I cannot answer at present. The information on religion, ethnicity and culture is collected on an optional consent basis. I am not sure whether the Deputy is aware of this. Information on religion is collected solely for statistical purposes, and the data collected on ethnicity and cultural background will allow us to determine the effect of targeted education interventions on Traveller education or education for non-Irish who need more support. It is for genuine use in planning resources and directing additional capitation grant funds to schools which need them. The Deputy is sensible enough to know there is a reason for collecting information, which is to be able to plan and put in place resources. One can see the benefits of using proper data in school planning in recent years. This was not done in the past and schools popped up at the whim of certain Deputies or Ministers, which is not the proper way to run the system. Our education system has suffered in the past from a lack of proper planning. One needs to collect data to be able to plan and that is what this is about.

The reason the information will be kept until people are aged 30 is because it will be part of their personal history which people will want to use. We often go to schools for information from past roll books with regard to who was there. I believe it is causing concern and we probably need to bring more clarity to it.

With regard to capitation grants, with the best will in the world the old system often had duplication. We hope this will not happen in the new system and we will be able to have greater and clearer allocation of resources.

I will come back to the Deputy on the other issues he raised.

Frank Feighan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Before we move on to the next Topical Issue matter, I am concerned we have overrun the time allocated and I ask the Deputies and Ministers of State to try to keep within the time.