Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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157. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her views that the creation of the primary online database without the protection of the provisions of the Statistics Act 1996 is an appropriate method of gathering and processing the personal data of primary school children. [6278/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The statistics Act 1993 Under this Act "Information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no details that might be related to an identifiable person or business undertaking may be divulged to any other government department or body." The primary purpose of POD will be to monitor the education progress of primary pupils (in DES aided schools), throughout the primary system and onwards to post primary level and to help them develop their full educational potential. Once up and running other secondary purposes of POD will include becoming the basis for the allocation of teachers and capitation grants. Aggregated POD data will also be used for the production and publication of primary level statistics. It therefore is not possible to develop the Primary Online Database under this legislation.