Written answers
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Department of Social and Family Affairs
Data Protection
8:00 pm
Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 756: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the details of all instances since 1 June 2002 where personal data held by his Department or any agency under its auspices were compromised in any way; if the review by his Department of data security procedures announced on 22 November 2007 is completed; and the findings of that review in terms both of prior shortcomings and of future actions. [2167/08]
Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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This Department administers some fifty schemes and makes payments to one million people each week. Because of the nature, scale and diversity of its work, the Department holds extensive and detailed personal information about its customers and takes its responsibilities to safeguard this data extremely seriously.
Every effort is made by the Department and the agencies under its aegis to ensure that personal customer data is used solely for business purposes and that it is not compromised in any way. Since 1 June, 2002, the following breaches have occurred:
| Year | Details of Incident |
| 2003 | Unauthorised access by an official of a customers information. |
| 2005 | Unauthorised access by 74 officials of a customers information and the unauthorised access by one other official of another customers information |
| 2006 | Medical Certificates of Cause of Death for the years 1997-2001 went missing from the GRO office. (GRO became an agency of this Department on 1st January 2008) |
| 2007 | Unauthorised access by 2 officials of a customer information in relation to 2 separate individuals. |
The review of data security procedures, announced by An Tánaiste in November, 2007, is ongoing at present. The Department recognises that security measures must continually evolve. There has been, and will continue to be, considerable focus within the Department and externally on the issue of data confidentiality. Over the past number of years, the Department has undertaken a number of Information Security projects and has established internal structures to implement its policies. In tandem with this, a lot of technical work has been carried out on the Department's infrastructures and systems. This work is ongoing and will incorporate the findings of the current review.
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